Reference Styles for Scholarly Papers

There are many different styles of formatting a scholarly paper. Many nursing journals, and most nursing schools today use the APA (American Psychological Association) style. However, some nursing and most medical journals use the AMA (American Medical Association Style).

There are templates that one can purchase for formatting a paper in a given style, but they are a poor answer for several reasons. You lose control of the paper making editing harder. Additionally because of the embedded codes they create problems if you wish to submit the paper to a journal. Learning to do the three things listed above is a one time task, and will be useful throughout your career.

If you will be doing a lot of papers, or wish to keep a record of references that you have used for future reference, the best solution is to invest in an electronic "reference manager."

APA - A site with all the information you need to format an APA paper.
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/.

How to cite a Tweet in APA style.
http://moonflowerdragon.blogspot.com/2009/03/how-to-cite-twitter-posts-in-apa-style.html

Tutorial on using APA.
http://www.apastyle.org/apa-style-help.aspx

A six minute tutorial that demonstrates how to use the Word skills needed to create an APA paper. Not nearly as thorough as the APAstyle tutorial above.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KLL8fP9hjU

AMA. Although today many nursing journals use the APA style, more are moving to the AMA style because the manuscript is easier to read. This is due to the use of superscript numbers to denote a citation instead of the wordy references used in the APA style. In the manuscript, each references is numbered starting with the first reference in the manuscript and continuing sequentially to the last unique reference. If a reference occurs again in the text, the number assigned the first time is used again. The numbers are placed in the text as a superscript where the reference is used.This site provides the information you need for citations and the reference list:
http://library.nymc.edu/informatics/amastyle.cfm. For more detailed information see http://www.docstyles.com/amastat.htm

How to cite a Tweet in the Modern Language Association Style (MLA)
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/how-do-you-cite-a-tweet-in-an-academic-paper/253932/

Boise State page on citing a Tweet in APA and MLA style. AMA has not yet come up with a form for Tweets. If you cite a tweet for an AMA style journal, try using either APA or MLA style.
http://guides.boisestate.edu/content.php?pid=19556&sid=586398

There are MANY other formatting styles, but the two above are used almost exclusively in nursing and medical journals.

 

Created November 13, 2011
Updated February 2, 2014