Supply chain managment in food processing

Unit 1b Finding and documenting sources

FINDING SOURCES ............................................................... 2

Primary research ............................................................... 2

Secondary research ............................................................... 4

The Library ............................................................... 5

Print sources ................................................... 5

Electronic sources ....................................... 9

The Internet ............................................................... 14

DOCUMENTING SOURCES ................................................... 18

References .......................................................................... 18

Print sources .............................................................. 18

Electronic sources .................................................. 20

URLs and DOIs ...................................... 21

Son of Citation Machine ...................................... 23

In-text citations .............................................................. 24

One or two authors .................................................. 24

Multiple authors .................................................. 27

Personal communication ...................................... 27

Academic & Professional Communication T132 2

The 214 Major Report:

1b Finding & documenting sources

Finding sources

You must use at least six sources to write your major report. Before you begin, you have

to know what restrictions, if any, your teacher places on the sources you can use. For

example, he may expect sources to be fairly new (published within, say, the last 2 or 3

years); he may expect sources to adhere to a minimum and maximum length (eg between

one and ten pages); he may require every source to have full bibliographical information

such as an author, a title and a date of publication; he may expect you to use only

reputable websites and read online sources whose authors have a relevant background in

the field; he may expect you to use a variety of source types—both print and non-print—

such as books, journals, and specialist magazines. When you know what the rules are,

you can start your research.

There are two basic ways to acquire your sources: primary research and secondary

research.

Primary research

Primary research involves work done ‘in the field’ to discover your own original

information. Most primary research methods can be very time-consuming, requiring a lot

of preparatory work and a comparable amount of time spent compiling and analyzing the

results. If you feel your report will benefit from primary research, you should inform your

teacher as soon as possible so he can help you with the necessary preparation.

The following summarizes some points to consider before starting primary research.

PRIMARY RESEARCH

Interviews

Correspondence

Surveys

Site visits

SECONDARY RESEARCH

Library

Summon search engine

Databases

Print collection

Internet

Academic & Professional Communication T132 3

Interviews

Interviews can be conducted face to face or over the

telephone. Valuable information can be obtained by

interviewing an expert in the field of your topic, who

could be an instructor or adviser in your major or a

professional in the workplace. The first step is to decide

what specific information your report lacks,

information that cannot be obtained through secondary

research in the Library or on the Internet.

You must then carefully compose the questions that you want to ask the expert. A series

of simple Yes/No questions may not yield the information you need so devise some open-

ended questions that will allow the interviewee to speak at some length in his own way.

Consider also how much time you can reasonably ask of someone who is essentially

doing you a favour.

You must also think about how best to record the information you receive: Can you rely

solely on your memory? Are you quick enough to take notes? Will the interviewee allow

you to record the interview? When these questions have been settled, you are ready to

politely request an interview at a mutually convenient time and place.

The ultimate goal of the interview is a transcript, that is, a verbatim, written record of the

questions asked and the answers given. This will then become one of your report sources

and can be used in the usual way to paraphrase, summarize and quote ideas. Note,

however, that in the APA reference style, you should not write a reference for an

interview though you will still have to include an in-text citation for it. (See in-text

citations for personal communications on pages 27 and 28 below.)

Correspondence

Sometimes a face-to-face or telephone interview is not

possible—for example, it may be difficult to agree on a

mutually convenient time for the interview or the

interviewee may live far away. In this case, the interview

can be conducted by letter or email. The same rules apply

regarding the type of questions to ask and the demands you

can reasonably place on someone’s willingness to help.

Also, in both interviews and correspondence, make a

special effort to be polite: adopt a courteous tone when

making the request and, after you have the information,

send a follow-up letter, email or phone call to thank the

person who supplied you with the information.

An example of such “special request” correspondence can be found in Successful Writing

at Work by Philip Kolin on pages 112 and 113. For special email considerations, see also

pages 78 to 84. Note that the APA style does not require you to write a reference for a

personal communication such as a letter though you will still need to cite it in the text.

Academic & Professional Communication T132 4

Surveys

A survey involves posing your questions to many

people. There are two ways to conduct a survey: you

can ask oral questions of a variety of respondents and

record their answers as they are given, or you can

prepare a questionnaire for distribution, which is

completed and returned to you at the respondents’

convenience.

You first compose a set of questions designed to elicit the information you need to fill the

gaps in your knowledge. The questions can be varied—multiple-choice, yes/no, ranking,

or open-ended—and should not demand too much of the respondent’s time. As you write

the questions, remember that you will eventually be required to collate the results they

yield in a meaningful way, such as in a summary or in a table or chart, so phrase the

questions in such a way that they will yield easily collatable information.

Other decisions you must make include which individuals to ask, how many to ask, and

how to distribute and collect the questionnaires. As with the interview transcript and

email response, the collated information will provide you with a source for your report.

Site visit

Original information can also be obtained by a visit to

a site to record your observations. For example, a CE

student writing a report on campus traffic safety could

station himself at a busy intersection to observe the

behaviour of drivers and to measure the rate of traffic

at certain times during the day and week. A MKT

student researching how shops display their products

could spend some time at a supermarket observing

how successful various displays are in attracting customers. A CHE student writing about

desalination could visit the desalination plant at Al-Aziziyah to watch the process in

action at first hand and perhaps combine his visit with an interview with a technician.

Prior permission is of course required before visiting any site.

All methods of primary research need careful planning before the research is undertaken,

and, once it is completed, they all require a thorough, accurate analysis of the results

obtained. Primary research can supply you with information that cannot be found

anywhere else; however, you should consider it only if it will improve your report and if

you have the time and determination to do it well.

Secondary research

You will obtain most—possibly all—of your sources from secondary research. Unlike

primary research, where the writer interacts with his respondents to obtain original

Academic & Professional Communication T132 5

information, secondary research involves locating sources that already exist, such as

books, journals, magazines, government documents, theses and dissertations, business

reports, and reference works like encyclopedias, manuals, almanacs and dictionaries.

There are two basic methods of secondary research: the Library and the Internet.

The Library

The Library will provide you with access to hundreds of thousands of print and

electronic sources.

Print sources

Although you are likely to find electronic sources to be more useful for your report than

print sources, the KFUPM Library does contain many thousands of hard copies of books

and magazines to help you with your research. In some ways, being able to flick easily

through the pages of a ‘real’ book or magazine is often more convenient than having to

negotiate through the online pages of an e-book. The disadvantage, of course, is that a

real book or magazine will not give you an electronic version to work with and from

which to copy & paste text and illustrations into your report. Instead, you will have to

make photocopies.

On the plateau level, you will find some current periodicals and journals which are likely

to be too new to have been included in the Library’s electronic databases. These include

Time, Newsweek, Windows, Science, Popular Mechanics and Electronics World. There

are also some daily newspapers suitable for business and finance topics, such as the

International Herald Tribune and the Financial Times. On this level you will also find

the Library’s reference collection containing printed encyclopedias such as World Book

and Britannica as well as atlases, manuals, almanacs and dictionaries. In addition, there

are many hundreds of back copies of periodicals on the third floor and hundreds of books

in all majors on the fourth floor. Many of these publications are now very dated but can

still provide you with some useful background information for your report.

Call numbers

The KFUPM Library is an open-stack library which uses

the Library of Congress (LC) classification system. With

this system, a call number consisting of at least three

lines is assigned to every book and to the titles of all

periodicals. There are 21 major subject divisions,

indicated by one, two or (unusually) three letters. You

should by now be familiar with the letters that refer to

your major. See the table below which gives the basic one-

letter classification and the two-letter classification for

selected headings:

Academic & Professional Communication T132 6

A - General Works N - Fine Arts QE - Geology

B - Philosophy-Religion-Psychology P - Linguistics QH - Biology

C - History (Civilization) PC - Romance Languages QK - Botany

D - History (Except America) PD - Germanic Languages QL - Zoology

E - American History PE - English Language QM - Human Anatomy

F - Local American, Latin American History

PQ - Romance Literature QP - Physiology

G - Geography-Anthropology PR - English Literature QR - Microbiology

H - Social Sciences PS - American Literature R - Medicine

J - Political Science Q - Science S - Agriculture

K - Law QA - Mathematics T - Technology

L - Education QB - Astronomy U - Military Science

M - Music Scores QC - Physics V - Naval Science

ML - Music (Literature of Music) QD - Chemistry Z - Bibliography, Lib Science

Call numbers are found on the spine of books and consist of three or more lines:

Line 1: D is History; DS is Asian History.

Line 2 gives finer detail about the subject: Vietnam War

Line 3 indicates the author: Daniel C. Hallin

Here, the last line shows the year of publication, 1986.

This call number (DS 559.45 .H35 1986) refers to a book titled Uncensored War: The

Media and Vietnam by Daniel C. Hallin. In our Library, most books are shelved in the

stacks on the fourth floor. However, books with a DS call number are kept on the plateau

level. If our Library stocks this particular book, you will find it there.

One last piece of information you need to know about call numbers is how they

determine the order in which books are placed on the shelves.

 Books are first placed in alphabetical order according to their subject headings so A precedes B and BC precedes BD.

 If two books have the same subject heading, then the order is determined by the numerical order of the second line. So QA 873 precedes QA 2124.

 If two books have the same first two lines, the order is determined by the third line: the letter and the decimal number that follows it. So QA 2124 .F534

precedes QA 2124 .F54 (because the decimal number 0.534 is smaller than the

decimal number 0.54).

 If the first three lines are identical, order is determined by the fourth line if it consists of another letter and a number. The letter determines the order first of all

and, after that, the number. This number is treated as a decimal number even if

there is no decimal point so M456 precedes M46.

Academic & Professional Communication T132 7

The diagrams below illustrate the shelf arrangement according to call number:

D DC DL F FA

QA

50

QA

55

QA

76

QA

76.15

QA

76.73

PN

6231

.E259

PN

6231

.E29

PN

6231

.E4

PN

6231

.E74

PN

6231

.F44

QE

862

.D5

L22

QE

862

.D5

L35

QE

862

.D5

L4571

QE

862

.D5

L461

QE

862

.D5

M3311

QE

862

.D5

M37

You can find the call number of a book—as well as access the Library’s collection of e-

resources—by using the Library’s Summon search engine.

Using Summon to find a book’s call number

You can find a book’s call number using Summon in the following way. Supposing your

report task is to evaluate the discoveries of the Hubble Space Telescope, go to the Library

home page, enter your key term into the Summon box, and click Search.

On the following (results) screen, select “Book/eBook” from the Content Type sidebar

on the left of the screen:

1. Leave the category as “All” or select “Books.” 2. Enter your search term. 3. Click on Search.

Select Book/eBook.

Academic & Professional Communication T132 8

The page below shows the first few results obtained after entering the search term

“hubble space telescope” and selecting “Book/eBook” from the Content Type sidebar.

You will notice that each of the book entries on the results page has a call number.

You now need to know if the Library has a copy of your chosen book so click on “Check

Availability.” The following screen will appear:

The screen shows that one copy of this book is available in the Main Library. Write down

the book’s call number and go to the stacks on the fourth level. Find the book, scan its

contents quickly and, if the book looks as if it could be useful, check it out at the

circulation desk on the plateau level.

The book’s call number.

Choose a book and click on Check Availability.

Academic & Professional Communication T132 9

Electronic sources

Using Summon to find electronic sources

The advent of electronic media which can provide the full text of a book or an article is

making call numbers and print media in general redundant. While Summon is useful in

finding the call numbers of books, its main purpose is to enable the researcher to access

the Library’s electronic resources.

Step 1: Enter your search term in the Summon box with the default search category “All”:

Step 2: On the results page, select the categories you want using the sidebar on the left of

the screen.

Choose full text items so you will get an e-

version of the source. Do not exclude news-

paper articles.

Your choice in the Content Type box will be

determined by your teacher’s requirements.

It is recommended that you use journal

articles (which include magazines),

newspapers and books to write your report. So

choose these categories or simply keep “Any.”

The sidebar includes six other boxes (author,

subject, date, language, genre and region). You

are advised to leave these in the default mode

of “Any.”

Academic & Professional Communication T132 10

Step 3: Scan the results screen. The one below shows the first few results for the search

term ‘e-commerce security problems’:

Check every entry carefully trying to judge how useful and accessible the article might

be: Is the periodical a magazine, newspaper or journal? How old is the article? Does the

brief article description or abstract (if there is one) indicate its usefulness?

Step 4: Select two or three possible articles and then click on the title of each. The page

that appears will show the full text of the article, or there may be a choice between the

full text and a PDF version. If you have a choice, it is usually better to select the PDF

version, especially if the article has illustrations that are not shown in the full-text format.

The PDF version will provide the exact copy of the article as it appeared in the periodical

and so will show any illustrations.

The search term

In this box, you can choose to organize the articles by relevance or by date

(newest or oldest first). Number of results

Genre (journal, news-

paper, book, etc.)

Click here to save the

article in a folder. From

here, you can choose the

citation style (APA).

Click on a title to bring up

the full text of the article.

Click here to

see the abstract.

Title and Author

Bibliographic

details

Part of the abstract

This shows the number of

times the article has been

cited in other articles.

Academic & Professional Communication T132 11

Clicking on the title of the second article will bring up the screen below. It gives the full

text of the article but also indicates that a PDF version is available.

The full text article

This indicates that a PDF version is also

available.

The article appears as text

only. If it is useful, print it out.

Academic & Professional Communication T132 12

The PDF version

If you click on the PDF icon, the following screen will appear:

Step 5: The results page also enables you to make an APA reference for the articles you

choose, in the following way:

This shows the article as it actually

appeared in the magazine Card

Technology Today. If it is useful,

print it out.

On the results page, click this icon next to

the article you have chosen. It will save the

article in a temporary folder at the foot of

the screen.

Academic & Professional Communication T132 13

Open the folder. You will be offered a choice of styles. Select APA:

Copy and paste the reference into a Word file. Check that it is complete, accurate and

well-formatted. Make any necessary changes.

Other Library resources

It is possible that the Summon search engine will

furnish you with all the sources you need to write

your report. However, you should also be familiar

with, and try out, some of the other ways of

finding sources that the Library offers. For

example, the Library subscribes to over 40

electronic databases, many of which can provide

you with full text articles.

Four of the most useful databases for you are likely to be ABI/Inform Global (mainly for

business, finance, economics, and marketing); Academic Search Premier (a

multidisciplinary database offering access to 5000 journals in science, engineering and

the humanities); Applied Science & Technology Plus (offering full text articles in, as its

name indicates, applied science and technology); and the KFUPM theses & dissertations

database (giving access to academic work written by the University’s graduate students).

In addition to these databases, the Library also has electronic subscriptions to over 700

individual journals in a variety of disciplines and to 8 e-book databases, two of the

most important being the general databases, Credo Reference and ebrary.

The KFUPM Library is one of the most advanced libraries in the Middle East offering its

users everything they need to carry out high-level research. Use your semester in English

214 to acquire effective library research skills that will benefit you both in your studies

and later in your professional work.

Academic & Professional Communication T132 14

The Internet

The Internet is a vast collection of resources offering access to millions of websites.

However, it also requires a very careful approach since anybody can post anything on the

Internet and few websites can guarantee the accuracy and objectivity of their content.

While it is perfectly possible to confine your research to the Library’s print and electronic

resources, it is also advisable to devote some research time to discovering what the

Internet has to offer. As the Internet is constantly changing and expanding, the following

description offers a snapshot of what is currently available to the researcher.

Search engines

The first place to start is with a search engine. The most popular one, with about 80% of

all web searches, is Google. Other well known search engines are Bing, Yahoo!, and Ask.

Some search engines—referred to as metasearch engines—send search requests to

multiple search engines to locate information. Examples include Mamma, Search.com,

SurfWax, Dogpile, and WebCrawler. Some search engines of particular interest to you

specialize in academic searching; these include Magportal, Scirus, and Google Scholar.

Online magazines and websites

If you already know of specific websites, you can visit them directly and use the home

page’s search box to type in your key terms. Useful websites to visit include those of

magazines and newspapers, both general-interest and special-interest. (If you don’t know

the full web address of a magazine or newspaper, google it.) The following table shows

some possible online resources:

MAGAZINES NEWSPAPERS WEBSITES Time Daily Telegraph (paywall) BBC.co.uk

Newsweek Daily Mail CNN.com

New Scientist New York Times (paywall) Refdesk.com

Scientific American Washington Post Internet Public Library

Popular Science Financial Times How Stuff Works

Science Illustrated Herald Tribune CNET

Science Arab News ZNET

Science News Saudi Gazette Science Daily

The Economist eHow

Business Week

PC World

PC Mag

Wired

Popular Mechanics

Popular Electronics

Discover Magazine

Air & Space

Academic & Professional Communication T132 15

You may find that some publications are behind a paywall, meaning that they are

accessible only through subscription. An example is The Times newspaper of London.

The New York Times has a more flexible paywall in place: visitors are allowed to read ten

free articles per month, after which a fee must be paid. It should also be remembered that,

if you find that a particular publication is behind a paywall, it is possible that the

University subscribes to it so the magazine in question could still be accessible through

the Summon search engine. Most websites offer free access to all current articles and

archives (ie, copies of past articles).

Key search terms

The key to effective searching—whether through the Library’s Summon portal or through

the Internet—is to have good search terms. In general, the narrower you make your

search, the fewer, and the more relevant, the results will be. For example, supposing your

term report task was to discuss the problems of e-commerce security, you could start your

Internet search with Google:

 Entering e-commerce will bring you over 600 million hits.

 Entering e-commerce security will produce 200 million.

 Entering e-commerce security problems will produce over 30 million.

 Entering e-commerce security problems and solutions will bring 20 million hits.

The numbers are still enormous but, as the results are arranged by relevance, you need

only concentrate on the first couple of pages of results in order to find a suitable article.

With Google, you can usually ignore the first three or four entries on a results page as

they are likely to consist of paid-for advertisements:

Advertisements

The first ‘real’ article

Academic & Professional Communication T132 16

After using a search engine, try visiting the website of a specific magazine, for example

The Economist magazine (www.economist.com). Type your search terms into the search

box on the magazine’s home page: The next page you receive will show all The

Economist articles that contain your search terms.

Click on an article to read it. If you think it will be useful for your term report, print it out

directly from the Internet rather than copying & pasting it into a Word document. This

will give you the full bibliographic details which you will need to write the APA Works

Cited reference. (If you copy & paste, you may lose some important bibliographic

information that your teacher will want to see.)

Refining your search terms

So far, we have mentioned how using multiple key words can help you to narrow your

search and obtain more relevant sources. You can refine your search terms still further by

using Boolean operators (AND, NOT and OR), quotation marks, parentheses, and

asterisks.

Boolean operators

The use of AND will narrow your search. (Note, however, that in most search engines,

including Google and Summon, the AND operator is the default and so it can be omitted.

For example, hubble telescope problems is the same as hubble AND telescope AND

problems. The search engine will look for these key words in all the documents it

searches and will deliver only those documents that contain all of the search terms.

Enter your search terms

A selection of articles will appear.

Choose one that looks promising.

Academic & Professional Communication T132 17

The use of the OR connector will widen your search. For example, entering hubble OR

telescope will produce documents which contain the word hubble or the word telescope

or which contain both hubble and telescope. It will produce far more documents than

simply entering hubble telescope. If you are interested in other types of telescope besides

the Hubble Telescope, this could be useful. If you are only interested in the Hubble

Telescope, it isn’t.

The use of the NOT operator will narrow your search by excluding certain words from

the results. For example, if you enter the key search term hubble NOT telescope, you will

receive documents that contain the word hubble but which do not contain the word

telescope.

Quotation marks “ “

Another refinement is to put quotation marks (“...”) around your search term. Like the

AND and NOT operators, this will narrow your search. The quotation marks tell the

search engine to search the term as a complete phrase and not as separate words. For

example, by entering “hubble space telescope,” you will receive only documents that

contain those three consecutive words. Compare this with entering hubble space

telescope or hubble AND space AND telescope, which will produce many thousands

more documents all of which contain those three words either together or separately.

Parentheses ( )

Parentheses (round brackets) enable you to combine Boolean operators and so perform

two different searches at the same time. The combination of NOT and OR will limit your

search while the combination of AND and OR will expand it. For example,

“renewable energy” NOT (tidal OR current OR wave) will enable you to find

alternative sources of energy but not those involving tidal, wave or current-generated

energy.

“nuts” AND (allergy OR “food poisoning”) will search for articles about nuts as they

relate either to allergies or to food poisoning.

Wildcard *

An asterisk (*) can be placed anywhere in a word though it is most effective at the end.

It will expand your search by finding different forms of the asterisked word. For example,

motivat* will search for all forms of the word, such as motivate, motivation,

motivational, motivator, and so on.

employ* will search for employer, employee, employment, employed, and so on.

Academic & Professional Communication T132 18

Documenting sources See also Successful Writing at Work, pp. 328 – 336 and 352 – 354.

When you locate a useful source, you should write a reference for it and add it to your

working bibliography, which is an evolving list of your potential sources. Documentation

also involves citing the source in your writing whenever you take an idea from it. In

English 214, you will use only the APA style to compile your references and to make

your in-text citations.

References

Your English 214 textbook gives a fairly comprehensive selection of APA references on

pages 331 to 336 and a model reference list on pages 352 to 354. The following pages

give information about the various elements that comprise a reference and give some

examples of the references that you are most likely to use in your report.

Your reference list, titled References, will appear at the end of your report. It consists of

all the sources of information that you cited in the report (except for personal

communications such as letters and interviews—see page 3). Its purpose is to enable the

reader to identify and retrieve the information you used. The reference list is double-

spaced; it is arranged in alphabetical order according to the author’s last name; and the

first line of each entry has a hanging indent. (See SWAW pp. 352 – 354.)

Print sources

References can be classified into print and electronic sources. Both typically consist of

the author name, the date of publication, the title of the work, and the publication data.

Authors and editors Place the family name first followed by the initials for up to seven different authors. The

last author name follows an ampersand (&). For eight or more authors, write the first six,

insert three ellipsis points ( ... ), and then write the last author without an ampersand. If

the work is an edited book, place the editor(s) in the author position with (Ed.) or (Eds.)

in parentheses. If there is no author, move the title to the author position. End this

element with a full stop (period).

Kolin, P. C.

Thompson, K. A, Jones, B. B., & Wilson, C. D.

Williams, J. C (Ed.)

Date of publication For books and journals, give the year of publication in parentheses after the author name

(or title if there is no author). For magazines and newspapers, give the year and the

exact date (the month; the day and month; or the season) separated by a comma. If the

Academic & Professional Communication T132 19

article has no date, write n.d. (“no date”) in parentheses. Write a full stop (period) after

the closing parenthesis.

Kolin, P. C. (2012).

Walker, D. U. & Johnson, B. L. (2012, August).

Collins, P. T., Cameron, D. D., & Suleiman, S. G. (2012, September 1).

Peters, T. L. (2011, Winter).

Donald, F. W. (n.d.).

Titles For an article or chapter title, capitalize only the first word of the title. If there is a sub-

title, capitalize the first word. Capitalize any proper nouns in the title or sub-title. Do not

use italics or quotation marks for article or chapter titles. If the chapter appears in an

edited collection, indicate this after the chapter title. End with a full stop.

Abbot, A. B. (2012). The use of style guides in report writing.

Al-Awani, M. (2012, July). Global warming: Challenges for the future.

Haybron, D. M. (2008). Protecting London from tidal flooding. In M. Hartley (Ed.),

Rising waters in Europe (pp. 214-236).

For the titles of periodicals such as journals, magazines and newspapers, give the name

in full using upper- and lower-case letters, and italicize the whole title. Place a comma

after a periodical title.

Al-Awani, M. (2012, July). Global warming: Challenges for the future. The

Environmental Monthly,

Bin Salman, A. B. (2011, May 15). Fast food and the rise of obesity in the USA. The

Washington Post,

For the title of any non-periodical works, such as a book or report, capitalize only the first

word (and the first word of any sub-title), and any proper nouns. Italicize the title. If the

publication requires additional information such as an edition number, give this in

parentheses immediately after the title without any preceding punctuation. End this

element with a full stop.

Kolin, P. C. (2012). Successful writing at work (3rd ed.).

Philips, T. & Philips, A. (2008). Writing skills in English.

Academic & Professional Communication T132 20

Publication data (volume, issue, pages) For journals and magazines, give the italicized volume number after the periodical title.

If each issue of the periodical is paginated separately (ie, each issue starts at page 1), add

the unitalicized issue number in parentheses immediately after the volume number, eg

54(3). (Note: while a journal article always requires a volume number or volume and

issue number, these are sometimes omitted for magazines.) Give the journal and

magazine page numbers without a preceding p. or pp. Newspapers do not require a

volume or issue number, and a newspaper’s page numbers must be preceded by p. (for a

one-page article) or pp. (for two or more pages). For journals, magazines and

newspapers, all non-consecutive page numbers must also be given. Do not give publisher

names and locations for any periodicals. End this element with a full stop.

Abingdon, M. J. (2012). Designing an integrated transport system in Montreal.

Canadian Journal of Transport, 65, 223-236.

Al-Awani, M. (2012, July). Global warming: Challenges for the future. The

Environmental Monthly, 56(4), 25-28.

The rise and fall of the euro. (2012, May 12). Business Week, 35(16), 3, 8, 12-13.

Grey, P. S. (2011, August 15). Anti-malarial nets prove a success in sub-Saharan

Africa. The Daily Telegraph, p. 16.

For books, you must give the location of the publisher (ie, the city and state for the USA,

or, outside the USA, the city and country), followed by a colon and the name of the

publisher. For US states, you will need to know the two-letter abbreviations. Do not give

page numbers for books, but you should give the page numbers for a chapter that appears

in an edited work. End this element with a full stop.

Kolin, P. C. (2012). Successful writing at work (3rd ed.). Boston, MA:

Wadsworth Cengage.

Pond, I. R. (2004). Cigarettes and advertising. London, United Kingdom: Penguin.

Shotton, B. C. (1998). The mountains of Asia. In D. Wilson & T. Smith (Eds.), A guide

to the world’s mountain ranges (pp. 231-265). New York, NY: Routledge.

Browne, A. J. (2003). Transformers. In Encyclopedia of electrical engineering (Vol.

20, pp. 113-128). London, United Kingdom: Random House.

Electronic sources

While print sources refer to the hard copy, paper editions of books, periodicals, reports,

dissertations, and so on, electronic sources are those informational materials that have

been obtained online, whether through a Library database or the Internet. Typically,

Academic & Professional Communication T132 21

electronic sources follow the same rules for author, titles, date and publication data that

were outlined above for print sources, but they also contain an element to identify them

as having a digital origin. In order to write references for a variety of electronic sources,

you need to know about URLs and DOIs.

URLs and DOIs

URLs

You should already be familiar with the URL (“uniform resource locator”). Basically, it

is an Internet address consisting of the protocol (http://), the domain or host name

(kfupm.edu.sa), and some other information that provides a path to a specific document:

http://www.kfupm.edu.sa/SitePages/en/atozindex.aspx

When writing a reference for an Internet source, you will have to include the document

URL after the words Retrieved from. The APA recommends you give the URL only for

the website home page if the article can be easily located. However, in English 214, you

should always give the full URL. To compose your reference, copy and paste the URL

given in your browser address window directly into a Word document. Do not write a full

stop after the URL.

Many of your electronic sources will be retrieved from a database. Should you include

the database information in the URL? This is what the APA Publication Manual says:

“In general, it is not necessary to include database information. Journal coverage

in a particular database may change over time; also, if using an aggregator such as

... ProQuest ... it may be unclear exactly which database provided the full text of

the article.” (p. 192)

(For a fuller discussion of databases and references, see the OWL website at:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/10/.) The examples below are of the

online versions of a magazine, a journal, an encyclopedia, a book, and a nonperiodical

web document. As a general rule, include page numbers in your periodical reference if

they are given in the online document; otherwise, omit them.

Europe’s Achilles heel. (2012, May 12). Economist. Retrieved from

http://www.economist.com/node/21554530

Steptoe, A. & Sohn, H. (2012). Investment in small-to-medium enterprises: An east

London case study. E-Journal of Historical Studies, 2(3), 26-34. Retrieved from

http://www.ejhs/studies/060912/smelondon/

Map. (2012). In Encyclopædia Britannica online. Retrieved from

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/363506/map

Academic & Professional Communication T132 22

O’Dell, R. (2012). Indoor sports. Retrieved from http://www.sportsbooks.com/html/osr/

Spiegelhalter, D. (2012, May 11). Road safety: Do more cars mean more accidents?

Retrieved from http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120510-more-cars-more-

accidents

DOI

There are sometimes problems with Internet sources. Links, for example, can break

temporarily or disappear permanently, meaning that the URL will no longer work. For

this reason, a group of international publishers devised the DOI, standing for “digital

object identifier.” The DOI system allocates a unique, permanent alphanumeric string to

an online document, which points to its location on the Internet. If an electronic

periodical article has been assigned a DOI, you will usually find the number on the first

page close to any copyright information, and also on the database information page for

the article.

The APA recommends that the DOI, if available, should always be used in place of the

URL. As with the URL, there is no full stop after the DOI. When writing the DOI, use

lower-case letters followed by a colon—doi: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The article below was found through Summon. Note the DOI top left. The reference for

this journal is given below:

Clampin, M., Lumb, D., Sirianni, M. & Smith, E. (2005). Detectors for space science:

Future requirements and considerations for flight detectors. Experimental

Astronomy, 19, 45-67. doi: 10.1007/s10686-005-9010-5

Academic & Professional Communication T132 23

Son of Citation Machine

The APA rules for writing references are even more complicated than the above

description suggests. A helpful tool for making references is Son of Citation Machine,

which is available at: http://citationmachine.net/index2.php.

1. Enter the website and select APA from the menu on the left. The following page will

appear:

2. From the menu on the left, select PRINT or NONPRINT, and then your source type,

for example online newspaper article. Fill in the boxes according to the instructions:

The APA has been selected.

An online newspaper has no

pages so leave this box blank.

Copy & paste the URL from

your browser’s address box. Click here when everything

has been entered accurately.

Academic & Professional Communication T132 24

3. The following screen will appear after clicking on Make Citation:

4. Copy and paste the citation into your Reference list. Check carefully that it conforms

to APA guidelines for an online newspaper article and that it is correctly formatted:

Warman, M. (2012, May 12). Google brings driverless cars to the road. Daily Telegraph.

Retrieved from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/9257532/Google-

brings-driverless-cars-to-the-road.html

Almost all the sources you are likely to need have been described and exemplified above.

These include both print and electronic versions of books, edited books, encyclopedias,

journals, magazines, newspapers, and web pages. You will find other types—such as blog

posts, emails, podcasts, and interviews—on pages 332 to 336 of the 214 textbook,

Successful Writing at Work.

In-text citations

Whenever you take an idea from a source and use it in your writing, you must tell the

reader where you found the idea by documenting it in the text of your report. These in-

text citations refer the reader to your Reference list at the end of your report, which he

can use to check the accuracy of your writing or to follow up on any points of interest.

You must read pages 328 to 330 of Successful Writing at Work. These pages explain

about the need for documentation and identify which sources need to be documented and

which do not.

Academic & Professional Communication T132 25

The APA uses the author-date system for in-text citations, which requires the author’s

family name and the year of publication. Give only the year even if the reference, for

example that of a newspaper article, also includes the month and day.

Apart from the author and the year of publication, you should also include any help you

can give the reader to locate the exact information you are citing. When quoting

material, this additional help is a requirement. For paraphrasing and summarising, the

APA “encourages” writers to provide the extra help. However, in English 214, you must

always provide the extra help regardless of whether you are quoting, paraphrasing or

summarising.

For print sources, this additional help will almost always involve the page number (which

follows a ‘p.’ or ‘pp.’). For electronic sources that have no page numbers—such as most

website articles—there are several possibilities:

 If the electronic source has no page numbers but the paragraphs of the article are numbered, give the paragraph number using the abbreviation para, eg (Jones, 2011, para. 3).

 If the electronic source has neither page numbers nor paragraph numbers but it has section headings, give the section heading followed by the number of the

paragraph from which the idea was taken: eg (Al-Qahtani, 2012, Recent Developments, para. 2)

 If the section heading is too long to include in its entirety, abbreviate it and place it within quotation marks: eg (Smith, 2009, “How long will,” para. 6)

The full title of the section heading above is How long will the waves take to reach other countries?

For electronic sources, you must not manufacture your own page numbers. For example,

if you print out a four-page source from the BBC website, you cannot number these pages

1 to 4. You must, instead, follow the APA rules outlined above and use paragraph

numbers and section headings to give your readers the extra help they need to locate the

source information you used.

Some examples of in-text citations are given below:

Reference:

Kolin, P. C. (2012). Successful writing at work (3rd ed.). Boston, MA:

Wadsworth Cengage.

In-text-citation:

Kolin (2012) said that there was no need to document well-known dates, such as the July 1969 moon landing (p. 329).

There is no need to document well-known dates, such as the July 1969 moon landing (Kolin, 2012, p. 329).

Academic & Professional Communication T132 26

Reference:

Miller, T. A. & Baker, C. (2008). Deep-sea exploration in the Mariana Trench. Journal of

Oceanography, 14(4), 72-85. Retrieved from http://www.joc/articles/212343/

marianatrench/

In-text-citation:

Miller and Baker (2008) identified the main risk of deep-sea diving as hypothermia (“Hypothermia at,” para. 3).

The main risk of deep-sea diving has been identified as hypothermia (Miller & Baker, 2008, “Hypothermia at,” para. 3).

In the example above, note the use of the ampersand (&) between the author names in the

parenthetical citation. When two authors appear in the text, the word “and” is used.

If a work has no author, use the first few words of the title and the year. Use quotation

marks (“...”) around the titles of articles, chapters or web pages. Use italics for the titles

of periodicals, books, brochures or reports:

Reference

Greeks on the brink: Exit beckons. (2012, April). Business Monthly. Retrieved from

http://www.businessmonthly.com/eurotrade/09042012

In-text-citation:

Leaders at the G8 summit all expressed a desire for the Greek economy to recover and stay within the euro zone (“Greeks on the,” 2012, para. 1).

It is possible to have more than one citation for a particular idea: include both citations, in

alphabetical order, within the same parentheses, and separate them with a semi-colon:

Reference

Johnson, M. F. & Watkins, B. (2012, September 1). EU unemployment rises in

second quarter. Daily Trader, p. 8.

New jobless figures paint gloomy picture. (n.d.). Retrieved from

http://www.econblog.com/news/govstats/article/

In-text citation

Despite hopes for an upward trend in the August job data, the most recent statistics point to a continuing increase in unemployment among struggling economies (Johnson & Watkins, 2012; “New jobless,” n.d.).

Academic & Professional Communication T132 27

Multiple authors

In the in-text citations above, there have been one or two authors. However, it is quite

likely you will encounter sources, especially journal articles, that have three or more

authors. The rules for citing multiple authors are quite complex. They depend on whether

the authors are (1) being cited for the first time or subsequent times, and whether (2) the

parenthetical citations are being given for the first time or subsequent times. See the table

below, paying particular attention to the use of “et al.” (meaning “and the others”); the

use of “and” or the ampersand in parenthetical citations; the use of square brackets; and

the use of punctuation (commas and full stops).

You can refer to the table below for guidance, or, for a less detailed description, visit the

OWL website at http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/03/.

Basic citation styles

Type

First citation in

the text

Subsequent

citations in the

text

First

parenthetical

citation

Subsequent

parenthetical

citations

One author

Coe (2012)

Coe (2012)

(Coe, 2012)

(Coe, 2012)

Two authors Coe and Kent

(2008)

Coe and Kent

(2008)

(Coe & Kent,

2008)

(Coe & Kent,

2008)

Three authors Coe, Kent, and

Jones (2010)

Coe et al. (2010) (Coe, Kent, &

Jones, 2010)

(Coe et al., 2010)

Four authors Coe, Kent, Jones, and Smith (2011)

Coe et al. (2011) (Coe, Kent, Jones, & Smith, 2011)

(Coe et al., (2011)

Five authors Coe, Kent, Jones,

Smith, and Dunn

(2007)

Coe et al. (2007) (Coe, Kent, Jones,

Smith, & Dunn,

2007)

(Coe et al., 2007)

Six or more

Coe et al. (2005)

Coe et al. (2005)

(Coe et al., 2005)

(Coe et al., 2005)

Groups with

recognisable

abbreviation

World Health

Organisation

(WHO, 2012)

WHO (2012)

(World Health

Organisation

[WHO], 2012)

(WHO, 2012)

Groups with no

recognisable

abbreviation

University of

Cambridge (2009)

University of

Cambridge (2009)

(University of

Cambridge, 2009)

(University of

Cambridge, 2009)

Personal communications

Personal communications are cited in the text of your report but, according to APA rules,

do not appear in your Reference list. Examples of personal communications include

memos, private letters, interviews, telephone calls and certain unrecoverable electronic

communications like emails and bulletin board messages that have not been archived.

To cite a personal communication in your report, give the name of the person involved,

write personal communication, and give the date. For example, if, as part of the information-

gathering for your major report, you interviewed a professor in your department, Dr.

Ahmed Mohammed Al-Suwaidan, you would cite any information you take from this

Academic & Professional Communication T132 28

interview in one of the following ways:

In a joint enterprise, Saudi Arabia and Sudan are hoping to extract large deposits of gold, silver and copper from the Red Sea within the next three years (A. M. Al-Suwaidan, personal communication, September 9, 2012).

Dr. Ahmed Al-Suwaidan, KFUPM professor of Petroleum Engineering, has stated that, in a joint enterprise, Saudi Arabia and Sudan are hoping to extract large deposits of gold, silver and copper from the Red Sea within the next three years (personal communication, September 9, 2012).

For the use of in-text citations with APA quotation, see Unit 1c.