A Review of APA Style for Graduate Students

JACK A. HYMAN, PH.D

Peer Reviewed vs. Popular Literature

 Peer Reviewed
 Someone actually wrote the article and others provided constructive
feedback from the academic or commercial / technical community.
For example, an IEEE or ACM Journal is a Peer-Reviewed Journal. A
vendor reviewed technical white-paper is often a peer-reviewed
document not popular literature.
 Popular Literature
 Does the article or source have a lot of advertising? Does it sell futures
without concrete sources that can be cited? Can you answer the
questions “says who, based on what” for every bold statement made?
 Usually, popular literature tries to hone in on a very specific niche topic that is
relevant to a market without any reliable sources of authority or credibility.
Types of Websites

 Blogs, Wikis, Social Media Sites, News Sites (Unless A Government Source)
 Creditability in academic writing is MARGINAL
 University / Academic, Scientific Community, Research, Open Source
 Credibility has to be verified. Are there sources to point to? How recent is the
data? How credible are the sources based on the brand? (i.e. Do a Google
Search)
 Journals, Search Sources (Pointing to Articles from Publications)
 THIS IS WHAT YOU WANT!!!
Books
 Vendor Publishers
 Usually, the focus of the vendors is to tie together a product sale with the
messaging of the book. A few vendors are not like that though. They do cover
high level topics because they have billion dollar research groups. These are
sometimes traps.
 Self Publishers
 Self publishing is a blessing and a curse. The fastest way to market is to get
yourself to market. For a $500-1000, almost anyone with a decent editor can
publish a 200-300 page academic textbook. Will it be any good? Case and
point, credential validations is essential. Just because the topic is hot does not
mean the person is the expert.
 Industry Publishers
 Industry publishers follow the money. They often do get the experts but the
content can actually be 12-18 months old by the time it gets to market. The
bigger houses are often actually more challenged than the
industry/academic presses because of red-tape. For the industry publishers,
look at how recent the product was authored.
Citation Tools

 Citation Machine
 http://www.citationmachine.net/apa/cite-a-website
 Cite This For Me
 http://www.citethisforme.com/
Citation & Writing Style Websites

 APA Style
 http://www.apastyle.org/
 OWL Purdue
 https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/
 Nova Southeastern University
 http://nova.campusguides.com/sharkwrites/APA
 The Elements of Style by Shrunk & White
 http://www.jlakes.org/ch/web/The-elements-of-style.pdf