Documentation, Part II

by Derik Casper
BSU Writing Center

The first part of this article (#106, November 2000) dealt with general issues of documentation in the four leading styles: APA, CBE, CMS, and MLA. In this second part, we focus on the documentation of online sources.

As any teacher knows who requires documented papers, students are relying more and more on the Internet, especially the World Wide Web, for source material for their papers. Indeed, many students will use nothing but web sources if they are not specifically required to include print sources. This trend raises two issues: how to evaluate the worth and reliability of web sources, and how to document them in a paper.

Evaluating sources

It is easy for students to use a search engine and type in keywords that ultimately point them to the info they are looking for. In fact, students like to treat the web as a replacement for the library. However, the way in which information is found in the library requires students to evaluate the sources. For instance, while researching in the library, students will look in specific directories and read abstracts in order to decide if the source is useful prior to reading the source. Researching on the web is not as intensive. A key word search can lead straight to an article. Therefore, students need to think about more than just finding information when they use the net. The Internet is not any different from other sources in this respect. The excitement of finding something useful for a paper often overwhelms students, and they forget to look for author and title as well as other important things, like the last time the source was updated.

Because it is easy to post information to the Internet as well as find information, the first thing students need to be aware of is how to judge the quality of the site. Some sites are more reputable than others. In identifying reputable sources, the first place to look is the domain: commercial (.com), governmental (.gov), educational (.edu), and non-profit organization (.org). The better information (especially for academic work) will be found on the .gov .edu and .org domains. Commercial sites can be good, but this is where many people post personal web pages, and personal web pages need to be scrutinized for bias and accuracy.

Students should ask the following questions when researching on the net.

What type of domain does the information come from (educational, non-profit, commercial, etc.)?

Is the content appropriate for the paper's subject?

Is it somebody's personal page?

Who wrote the page?

Is the person or institution a qualified authority?

Where is the author's name? (This can usually be found at the bottom of the page, or in an About us or Contact us section. The webmaster is not the same as the author, unless it is a personal page.)

Are the author's credentials provided?

Does the author seem to be reliable?

When was the page updated last? (This will also be found at the bottom of the page typically, but within a site, different pages can be updated at different times.)

Finally, students should always follow a page back to its home page by truncating the URL (web address). This trick often shows how the author(s) of the site ordered information and will give students more opportunity to find the information they need for both evaluation and citation.

For example, suppose I am writing a paper on gun control and decide to research on the web. I go to my favorite search engine, type in gun control, and out of the numerous hits, follow a link to a paged called "Peace Through Strength is the Only True Peace." The article is filled with quotes and statistics and looks like something I should consider using for the paper. In fact, with this article I actually have the author's name, Mark E. Howerter, right up front. I need to evaluate this article in order to know how to use it for my paper; but, from the page I found, I can only answer two or three of the questions.

If I click on the address http:// www.otherside.net/peaces.htm in the location bar, I can truncate the address by deleting "peaces.htm" and hit enter. This takes me to the main web page for this site. From the main web page I can find the name of the site, The Other Side of the News (TOSN). I learn that TOSN prides itself on being an "alternative source for news and information with a decidedly Christian message that is SOOOOOOOO CONSERVATIVE we make Rush Limbaugh look like a: FLAMING LIBERAL." I also find that "Mark E. Howerter is also the founder of 'Intolerance International.'" I can also find the last updated dates and copyright dates for Howerter's articles.

Documenting sources

By evaluating a site and answering the questions, a student should have all the information needed for proper citation of the site. Now the only problem is to organize the information in the correct format depending on the style required. The MLA has addressed Internet citations in the fifth edition of the MLA Handbook. The other major style manuals, APA, CBE, and CMS, seem to be waiting for further standardization of the Internet before including the citation format in their handbooks. (The APA website does have an Internet page that provides guidelines for citing Internet sources http://www.apa.org/ journals/webref.html).

Web documents share many of the same elements found in a print document (e.g., authors, titles, dates). Therefore, the citation for a Web document often follows a format similar to that for print, with some information omitted and some added.

APA (American Psychological Association)

Here are a few examples of how to cite documents posted on APA's own Web site.
An article from the journal American Psychologist:

Jacobson, J. W., Mulick, J. A., & Schwartz, A. A. (1995). A history of facilitated communication: Science, pseudoscience, and antiscience: Science working group on facilitated communication. American Psychologist, 50, 750-765. Retrieved January 25, 1996, from the World Wide Web: http:// www.apa.org/ journals/jacobson.html

An article from the APA Monitor (article in a magazine, no author identified):

From 'character' to 'personality': The lack of a generally accepted, unifying theory hasn't curbed research into the study of personality. (1999, December). APA Monitor, 30(11). Retrieved August 22, 2000, from the World Wide Web: http://www.apa.org/monitor/ dec99/ss9.html

All references begin with the same information that would be provided for a printed source (or as much of that information as is available). If no publication date is available for a document, use "n.d." (stands for "no date") in its place. The Web information is then placed in a retrieval statement at the end of the reference. It is important to give the date of retrieval because documents on the Web may change in content, move, or be removed from a site altogether.

CBE (Conference of Biology Editors)

CBE recommends that the format for books or journals be followed with a few additions. After the title, list the type of electronic media in brackets: for example, [newspaper online]. Finish the entry with "Available from: [URL]" and "Accessed [date]."

CBE numbered sequence form:

1. Associated Press. NASA's Stardust spacecraft survived solar flare. CNN.com [news service online]. 2000 Nov 23. Available from: http://www.cnn.com/2000/ TECH/space/11/23/ stardust.ap/index.html Accessed 2000 Nov 28.

CBE name-year form:

Associated Press. 2000 Nov 23. NASA's Stardust spacecraft survived solar flare. CNN.com [news service online]. Available from: http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/space/ 11/23/stardust.ap/index.html Accessed 2000 Nov 28.

CMS (Chicago Manual of Style)

CMS has not been updated since 1993; therefore, the CMS Manual gives no convention for citing Internet sources. There is, however, a website that has been endorsed by the Humanities and Social Sciences Online maintained by Professor Melvin Page at http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~africa/ citation.html which provides guidelines based on CMS for Internet citations. Here is the order Professor Page recommends:

Author's Last Name, First Name (author's Internet address, if appropriate). "Title of Work" or "title line of message." In "Title of Complete Work" or title of list/site as appropriate. (Internet address). [menu path, if appropriate]. Date, if available. Archived at: if appropriate.

MLA (Modern Language Association)

The fifth edition of the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers has been updated to include electronic publication citation and specifically addresses the difficulty of citing Internet sources.

The recommendations in this section tend to treat sources for which a considerable amount of relevant publication information is available. In truth, though, many sources do not supply all desired information. Thus, while aiming for comprehensiveness, writers must often settle for citing whatever information is available to them (179). MLA has included citation guidelines for electronic publications that range from cd rom databases to the different Internet protocols. Most students will use online articles for their sources, so that is what we will cover here.

The typical entry for a work in an online periodical consists of the following items.

1. Author's name (if given)
2. Title of the work or material (if any; a review or letter to the editor may be untitled), in quotation marks
3. Name of the periodical (underlined)
4. Volume number, issue number, or other identifying number
5. Date of publication
6. The number range or total number of pages, paragraphs, or other sections, if they are numbered
7. Date of access and network address

If you cannot find some of this information, cite what is available, but keep the items in the same order.

These are the basics for citing Internet sources, but we need to mention a few more conventions. First, if a URL needs to be broken to fit on more than one line, break it at a slash (/). Second, for CMS and MLA the URL is in carets. This is not the case for APA and CBE. Finally, if students are using parenthetical in-text citation (rather than numbered sequence or footnotes), they do not have to include the web address in the parenthesis. Just as in other sources, there should be a name or a title or date that directs the reader to the full reference.

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