Research Guides: APA 6th Edition: No Author

About Citing Web Sites

For each type of source in this guide, both the general form and an example will be provided.

The following format will be used:

References - entry that appears at the end of your paper.

In-Text Citation - entry that appears in the body of your paper after a direct quote or paraphrase.

Information on citing and several of the examples were drawn from the APA Manual (6th ed.).

Numbers in parentheses refer to specific pages in the manual.

Document from a web site with no author

No author? Are you sure?

If the web site gives no author's name, but is from a domain that includes .edu, see the Web Page from a .edu site section of this guide.

If no author name is given, but the page is from a domain that includes .org, you may be able to list the name of the organization as the author, like this:

Reference list:

Name of organization (Abbreviation, if applicable). (Year of last update or copyright year; if not known, put n.d.). Title of web document. Retrieved from URL of specific document.

Example:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). (2015). Animals used for food. Retrieved from http://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-food/

In-Text Citation:

(Abbreviation or name of organization, Year, page or paragraph number if available)

Example:

(PETA, 2015)

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If, however, there is no particular organization responsible for the web site's content, follow this format:

Reference list:

Title or partial title of specific document. (Year of last update or copyright year; if not known, put n.d.). Title of website. Retrieved from URL of specific document

Example:

Osteoarthritis overview. (2015). eMedicineHealth.com. Retrieved from http://www.emedicinehealth.com/osteoarthritis/article_em.htm#osteoarthritis_overview

In-Text Citation:

("Title or partial title of specific document", Year, page or paragraph number if available)

Example:

("Osteoarthritis overview," 2015) (NOTE: For the in-text citation, use quotation marks around the title or partial title)

Helpful Tips:

When citing sources that you find on the Internet you only need to include a retrieval date if the information you viewed is likely to change over time (p. 192).

Sometimes websites are missing pieces of information that you would typically use when citing them, like an author or a date. You can use this table created by APA to help you deal with these sources.

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