How to Cite Materials from Online Resources (Internet)

Students cite or quote materials from Electronic Resources and Internet in writing the research papers. Citation or quotation is crucial to give the exact words of something that has been written, especially in order to support an opinion or prove an idea.

Students should be cautious not to cite online materials which are not retrievable from the Internet. For instance, students should avoid quoting information from webpages which require a login or free registration to retrieve the cited information or are protected by passwords. It is acceptable to cite information from this type of website though it is not recommended. In addition to that, researchers are not encouraged to cite articles from websites which are accessible only through online paid subscriptions such as The Wall Street Journal Online and The New York Times, to name a few.

To cite files available for viewing or downloading from the Internet, the electronic address or Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of the web resources must be written for future references by the readers. Moreover, the protocol (http://) for a web address may be omitted since typing either http://goodessays.blogspot.com/index.html or goodessays.blogspot.com/index.html will bring you to the same webpage. The protocol for an electronic address however is necessary only if it is not http:// like a file from an ftp server should be written as ftp.websites.com/file so that the file can be accessed successfully.

Include the following information (if available) of the online materials cited in your research papers accordingly:

1. Name of author, editor or translator
2. Title of material
3. Title of website
4. Date of electronic publication, of latest update, or of posting
5. Date when researcher found access to material
6. Electronic address – Write in a new line in <angle brackets>. Sometimes the web address is very long and you should always break the URL immediately after the slash.
   

For example, to cite an article titled “ProBlogger Group Writing Project – ‘How to…’” written by Darren Rowse from the URL on website named Problogger Blog Tips, the citation should be written as follow in the research paper.

Rowse, Darren. “ProBlogger Group Writing Project – ‘How to…’” ProBlogger Blog Tips 18 September 2006. Retrieved on 20 September 2006.
<http://www.problogger.net/archives/2006/09/18/
problogger-group-writing-project-how-to/>

Citation is very essential in writing academic essays or research papers. Using someone else’ idea or a statement in your writing without mentioning the sources of reference is considered plagiarism. If you find this post useful and would like to cite it in your research paper, please cite it in the format written above. If you would like to cite this article in your website, please provide a clickable direct link from your website to this post. Thanks.

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