Citing Sources

Giving Credit - how bibliography entries are made for web sites.

Part of being a good writer and scientist is letting others know how to locate information you used to write your paper. This is done by citing your sources in a bibliography at the end of a paper. There are some common ways to cite your sources for books, journals, and magazines, but the Web is a bit different. Articles on the Internet do not have page numbers and often do not have an author listed. So how do you site or reference Web-based information?

How to Cite a Web Source

There is no standard way to cite the information you obtain from a Web site. The two most common methods used for school papers are the APA (American Psychological Association) and the MLA (Modern Language Association). Each one has a similar method for citing information that includes:

• author's name (if known) 
• full title of the document in quotation marks 
• title of the complete work (if applicable) in italics 
• date of publication or last revision (if available) - sometimes you need to check the home page for the web site to locate this date
• full http address (URL), sometimes within angle brackets
• date of visit in parentheses

MLA Style Website Citation Example 

Ortiz-Barney, Elena. "Time Traveling Plants." 
Ask a Biologist. 2001. 
<http://askabiologist.asu.edu/research/ seeds/index.html> 
(7 July. 2001). 

MLA Style Website Citation with Two Authors

Cooper, Kim and C. J. Kazilek. "Seeing Color." 
Ask a Biologist. 2001. 
<http://askabiologist.asu.edu/research/seecolor/index.html> 
(7 July. 2001).

MLA Style Website Citation with No Author

"Puzzles." Ask a Biologist. 2001
<http://askabiologist.asu.edu/expstuff/puzzles.html>
(7 July. 2001)

On the Ask A Biologist website we have a link at the bottom of each page to help you cite your work correctly. You can try it out on this page by clicking on the link below.