Problems with APA citations

This discussion was created from comments split from: Changes to APA Style in 7th Edition.
  • edited June 18, 2020
    Good evening,

    I am a first year doctorate student am just learning to use Zotero. I have been accumulating references and uploading them onto Zotero to have when I begin actual work on my dissertation.
    I'm in a graduate level class, and for one of the assignments we were to submit a reference page. I copied some references over to the clipboard, and pasted it onto a word document. (The process is very user friendly and easy to do by the way...)
    However, when I received feedback, I found that the references were done incorrect, according to my professor. His feedback stated "These are not in APA format. There are quite a few problems with most of these references."

    I asked him for specifics, so I could compare what I submitted to what is accurate and he did.

    This is what I had submitted.

    Botts, K. C. (2015). A selected historical analysis of the “Complete High School” Maize Kansas. Kansas State University.

    The portion of A selected historical analysis of the "Complete High School" Maize Kansas was italicized and it did not include (Doctoral dissertation) in the reference.

    My professor indicated that this was the correct method.

    Botts, K. C. (2015). A selected historical analysis of the “Complete High School” Maize Kansas. (Doctoral dissertation). Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS.

    None of the above was italicized.

    My question is, is the difference between the two citations a difference in editions? (IE 6th edition vs 7th edition)? Or did I do something else wrong? I'm trying to figure out what the difference is so I know how to proceed and if I need to go through and change a reference page after using Zotero to produce it. (Obviously I know to double check things, but to be prepared to make significant changes to each reference). I really appreciate any feedback and thank you.

    John
  • That‘s American _Sociological_ Association (ASA) 6th edition.

    The default APA style in Zotero is 7th edition. If you need APA 6th edition, install it from
    https://Zotero.org/styles/apa-6th-edition
  • I'm sorry, can you clarify, which citation was ASA? My citation or my professors? I just tried again to reference the citation and ensured that I was using APA 7th edition and it produced the same citation that I have above. (which according to my professor was incorrect.)
    Thank you, I just want to make sure that I am doing this correctly.
  • edited June 18, 2020
    No, I think bwiernik looked too quickly -- what you have should be APA and it's mostly correct:
    - italics for theses are correct APA style
    - 7th edition says no more publisher location, including for theses.

    Doctoral dissertation should be included, but in square brackets. Zotero will do that if you add it in the type field. This is what I get from Zotero:

    Botts, K. C. (2015). A selected historical analysis of the “Complete High School” Maize Kansas [Doctoral dissertation]. Kansas State University.

    This corresponds to the unpublished dissertation entry e.g. here: https://guides.library.msstate.edu/citationguides/apa7th

    What your professor thinks is correct is (almost) APA 6th edition. For APA 6th, there shouldn't be a period before (Doctoral dissertation) and the title is still in italics i.e.

    Botts, K. C. (2015). A selected historical analysis of the “Complete High School” Maize Kansas (Doctoral dissertation). Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS.

    See e.g. https://aus.libguides.com/apa/apa-theses

    Zotero does that correctly, too
  • Oh, my mistake. I read your citation incorrectly.

    Your professor is wrong about the italics (in either 6th or 7th edition)—the title would be in italics.

    If your reference isn’t showing “Doctoral dissertation”, be sure that you have entered that in the Thesis Type field in Zotero.

    APA 7th Ed doesn’t include publisher locations anymore. So if your professor is going to insist on including those, use the 6th edition style.
  • Thank you both for your input. It really means a lot to me that you have gone to such lengths to ensure that this is correct. I have one last simplistic question. When I pull the dissertation from the university library, Zotero is putting "ProQuest Dissertation Publishing" within the brackets. Is that because the dissertation was subsequently published by ProQuest? If that's the case, moving forward should I remove ProQuest and insert "Doctoral Dissertation" in its place?
    Once again, I greatly appreciate your input and help.
  • You should make sure the university is in the university field and ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global is in the archive field.

    You'll then get the correct:
    Botts, K. C. (2015). A selected historical analysis of the “Complete High School” Maize Kansas [Doctoral dissertation, Kansas State University]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.
  • Ahhhhhhh, I see now! Thank you so much for the help! You all are the best!
  • However, for works retrieved from the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global database, APA 7 ed. also requires including the UMI Number (referred to in the APA Manual, section 10.6, #65, as the Publication No.). For the dissertation above, that number is: 3708359.

    So the complete reference would be:
    Botts, K. C. (2015). A selected historical analysis of the “Complete High School” Maize Kansas (Publication No. 3708359) [Doctoral dissertation, Kansas State University]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.

    Where can that UMI Publication number be added into the Zotero entry, as there is no report number/publication number field in Thesis template? Somehow coded in Extra field?

    It was so much easier for APA 6th edition because the UMI number was placed at the end.
  • Publication No. 3708359 should go into Loc. in Archive
  • Place the number in the Loc in Archive field (this is the same as APA 6).
  • adamsmith & bwiernik, that works perfect! Thank you.
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