APA 7 - bibliography of online source - "retrieved on [date]" is missing

ningyo

My environment: I am using Zotero 6.0.23 (had the same problem with 6.0.22 as well) and LibreOffice on a Windows 10 system.

My university requires me to reference in APA style.
I remember that in past versions of Zotero, the generated bibliographical entry for an online source automatically contained "retrieved on" and the date.
I have filled in the dates, and they are recognized by Zotero, however "retrieved on" is missing from all bibliographical entries.

I understand that APA 7 no longer requires the date for stable sources, but it is required for sources that are likely to change over time. And since I have a) multiple sources that are likely to change over time, and b) would like to err on the safe side: What can I do to generate the retrieval date automatically?
While I do double-check all my bibliographical entries before submitting a paper, it is extremely cumbersome to add the retrieval date for each online source individually.

adamsmith

The APA style as is gives an accessed date when an item doesn't have any of DOI, Status, and publication date.
If your sources are likely to change, presumably so would their publication date, so your reference would still be clearly marked.
I'd recommend just going with that. The only alternative is to modify the APA style code -- I haven't tested, but I believe just finding
<else-if variable="URL">
<group delimiter=" ">
<choose>
<if variable="issued status" match="none">

and changing that last line to

<if variable="issued status" match="none">

Should work. General instructions are here.

bwiernik

Note that all of the examples with retrieval dates in the APA manual (except for the UpToDate one) also show “n.d.” (no date)—that was the motivation behind the logic for when to show a retrieval date. Generally, websites with publication dates don’t update frequently, so the style only includes a retrieval date if there is no publication date (or equivalent like status) or a DOI (which indicates persistence).

For the UpToDate example, including a retrieval date doesn’t make much sense — UpToDate entries change, but the appropriate URL to cite is the one corresponding to the version consulted (which is archival and doesn’t change). If I recall correctly, that is the URL that is shown in the manual. Thus, that page does not change and doesn’t need a retrieval date per the manual.

ningyo

Thanks, that clarifies things.

For websites with publication dates - yes and no, the ones I referenced were webpages on tourism websites with publication dates, but still likely to change over time. Maybe that's a special case.