social work

what's a doi?

a doi is a digital object identifier.

it is a unique alphanumeric string assigned by a registration agency (the international doi foundation) to identify content and provide a persistent link to its location on the internet. the publisher assigns a doi when your article is published and made available electronically. 

all doi numbers begin with a 10 and contain a prefix and a suffix separated by a slash. the prefix is a unique number of four or more digits assigned to organizations; the suffix is assigned by the publisher and was designed to be flexible with publisher identification standards.

american psychological association.  (2013).  what is a digital object identifier, or doi?.  retrieved from
    http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/what-is-doi.aspx

where can you find the doi for an article?

usually the doi can be found on the first page of the electronic journal article or if the article is found in a database, in the bibliographic record in the database.

if you don't see one and want to check, you can go to crossref.org and type in the author's last name and the name of the journal article.

if a doi is available, you will need to add it to your citation.

for example:

karplus, m. (2010). dynamical aspects of molecular recognition. journal of molecular recognition, 23(2), 102-104. doi: 10.1002/jmr.1018

if the article does not have a doi, then you would cite your article with the url of the journal home page.

if you found the article in a database and it is only published in that database, then you can add the database name and accession number

or the database url

for example:

berman, r. p. (2009). fused voices: narrated monologue in jane austen's emma. nineteenth-century literature, 64(1), 1-15. retrieved from http://ucpressjournals.com/journal.php?j=ncl

bilger, a.(2009). women novelists before jane austen: the critics and their canons (review). tulsa studies in women's literature 28(1), 201-202. the university of tulsa. retrieved october 9, 2013, from project muse database.

for more information about apa format, you can check out the apa manual or the apa style blog.