A report with no page numbers, is it an issue with APA 6th edition?

farooqm

Dear mates,

I have found a useful report that is published by a reputed institution, but surprisingly no mention of page numbers whatso ever. In my reference list for thesis, every article has page number as I am strictly asked to do so. But how to cope with a reference which has no page numbers, even when it should. Please check the link below for the article, I am talking about.

http://www.civilrights.org/publications/1996_telecommunications/


All suggestions welcome, many thanks.

DWL-SDCA

The document at the URL address you posted is an html (website) version of a printed book (OCLC 427551687) of essays compiled from a seminar/conference. I don't know if the book is paginated but that isn't relevant in your situation. You don't have the book in-hand and I couldn't find a pdf version. You will need to cite what you read, in the form that you accessed it. That means you should cite the web page of the essay using the Zotero website type. I would add a note stating that this is a web version of an out-of-print book and include the editors and publisher of the original book.

bwiernik

Easiest way would just be to cite it as a Book or Report with the URL where you retrieved it (if you want to add a note that it is an electronic version, you can put that in the Extra field like this:

medium: Electronic version of out-of-print book

but this isn't really necessary in APA style).

DWL-SDCA

...but this isn't really necessary...

Allow me to argue that it is necessary.

@farooqm is _not_ citing a book chapter (which would require a page range in almost all styles) but is citing a web document. We cannot know if there were any changes to the text during the transcription from book to web format. Indeed, after this discussion my curiosity and OCD led me to look at the web version and there are signs that the web document has undergone updates since the publication date of the actual book. [This isn't a pdf of the book nor an ebook. It is a completely different medium and, perhaps edition.] Thus, I would insist that my student would cite the web document. There should be some mention in the student's text that the item is an update or republication of the book; however, my opinion is firm that the cite-what-you-read policy should always be followed. In this case, citing a section from the web version of the "book" is straightforward because each section has its own url. A web citation doesn't require the inclusion of pagination.

bwiernik

(Certainly citing the URL is the important part here. My point of what was not necessary is including descriptive text about the book being online in square brackets. Including the URL implies that the web source was used.)

farooqm

Hi DWL-SDCA and bwiernik many thanks for such thorough, clear, and useful insights. Certainly your posts are very helpful and I shall proceed as suggested. Extra field in Zotero is very useful, I did not know earlier its purpose.

Professional citation to perfection shows the hardwork and sincerity. I will go through my whole list of references again by the end of dissertation.

many thanks again.