APA PDF Citation of Web Documents

zurpher
I wonder what Zotero item format to use when citing PDF files from the WWW.

According to the following website, the output should signify that it is a PDF file.

http://apaformat.org/apa-pdf-citation/
Web Document, Web Page or Report

Basic Format

Author. (Date). Title of the document [PDF file]. Retrieved from http://www.someaddress.com/full/url/ or doi:0000000/000000000000 or http://dx.doi.org/10.0000/0000

Example

Food and Agriculture Organization. (2007). Promises and challenges of the informal food sector in developing countries [PDF file]. Retrieved from ftp://ftp.fao.org/docrep/fao/010/a1124e/a1124e00.pdf
How can I achieve such an output in Zotero with the APA style?

Many thanks for your help.
  • bwiernik
    That site is incorrect. You would generally not include "[PDF file]" in references. The part of the citation in [ ] is for clarifying what type of material a source is if it's something other than a standard long-form report.

    From the APA guide, reports should take this form:
    Author, A. A. (year). Title of work (Report No. xxx) [Description of form]. Retrieved from Agency Name website: http://xxxxx

    The instructions for what constitutes "Description of form" are:
    Provide a description of the form inside brackets when it would assist the reader in identifying less typical types of sources (e.g., brochures, press releases, white papers, fact sheets). Otherwise, omit this.

    In any event, if you want to include something in brackets in APA style using Zotero, you can do so by adding it to the "Extra" field in the following format:
    {:medium: Description of form}

    Note the colon before and after the word "medium".

    A few item types currently have a field already mapped to the "medium" variable. For these types, you can just enter the information there.
    Artwork : Medium
    Audio Recording : Format
    Computer Program : System
    Film : Format
    Interview : Medium
    Podcast : File Type
    Radio Broadcast : Format
    TV Broadcast : Format
    Video Recoding : Format
    Web Page : Website Title
  • zurpher
    Would you recommend saving PDF files from the internet as a report? I ask because I think not every PDF file on the web is a report, for example, teaching material in a PDF format isn't.
  • bwiernik
    Save items based on the kind of reference item they are. A PDF of a journal article should be saved as as Journal Article. A book chapter should be saved as Book Section. The fact that these are PDFs rather than print books doesn't change their essential citation requirements.

    Report is a good item type for material that is published or otherwise widely available. It's a good fit for working papers, instructor-created course packs, study guides, etc. For lecture slides, I generally use Presentation. More details on requirements for citing class materials in APA are here: http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2012/11/how-to-cite-a-class-in-apa-style.html

    That site is the official APA style site. Its posts are accurate (unlike a lot APA guides on the Internet).

    Basically, whether something is a PDF, PowerPoint, or other filetype is unimportant for citation. The format for citation is based on its bibliographic nature, not how the file is stored.
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