Category: For Students

APA Convention Activities

Posted on by Marta Soto in For Faculty, For Individual Subscribers, For Librarians, For Students

Join Us for Presentations at the APA 2018 Convention in San Francisco!

We will be holding the following events

Join us in the APA Publishing Booth (#708) at the 2018 APA Annual Convention in San Francisco to learn how APA Publishing helps you at every stage of your education and career. Tell us about yourself to receive a $10 voucher for the APA Bookstore, and enter to win one of three $200 Visa® gift cards!

Enjoy coffee each day from 9:30 – 11:30 a.m. and California craft beers and wine from 3:30 – 4:30 p.m. at the JARS BAR in booth #708. Attend a presentation to learn what’s new in:

Thursday, August 9

11:00 a.m.         Magination Press® – Learn what’s new in our growing family of children’s books!

4:00 p.m.            APA Style Journal Article Reporting Standards (JARS)

Friday, August 10

11:00 a.m.         What’s New with APA Databases

4:00 p.m.            Teaching with APA Style CENTRAL®

Saturday, August 11

11:00 a.m.         New Features and Functionality for APA Style CENTRAL

4:00 p.m.            Gift card winners announced*

 

Ask an APA Style® Expert

Join us between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. each day to chat with an APA Style expert: Get answers to your questions, share your feedback, and learn more about APA Style resources.

We look forward to seeing you!

*Winners need not be present to win.

 

APA Style CENTRAL Expert Tip: Exporting an APA Style Paper Reference List

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Librarians, For Students

Do you need to create an APA Style® reference list for sharing with your journal club, collaborating with a colleague, or preparing a course assignment? APA Style CENTRAL® can help with that!

How to export a paper’s reference list formatted in APA Style as a Microsoft Word file:

1. At the top of the screen, expand the My File Cabinet menu and select My Papers to view your list of saved papers. Open the file containing the reference list you want to export.

2. In the left navigation menu of the paper editing screen, use the arrow to expand the EXPORT menu and select Download.

3. Under the Download Paper heading, select Word (*.docx, selected by default) or PDF as the file type.

4. Use the Download Paper button to export the file.

5. The exported file will be saved in your browser’s default Downloads folder (or the location specified when saving the file).

Tip: To obtain a reference list for an annotated bibliography, begin a new paper by entering a title and then use the Add References button to immediately begin creating your reference list (see screenshot below). When you’ve finished adding references, use the steps above to export the paper as a Word file and continue working in Word to insert your annotation for each reference.

This expert tip was inspired by a question from a user like you! Have a question of your own?
Please let us know at Support@APAStyleCENTRAL.org.

Related resources:

Webinar Alert: APA Style CENTRAL® Trainings for July & August 2018

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Librarians, For Students

APA’s training specialists have developed several webinars for librarians, instructors, and students that include a content overview and a live demonstration of features.

Click on any session link below to register (all times are US Eastern Time).

APA Style CENTRAL Overview (60 minutes) introduces librarians, faculty, and students to the platform:

Teaching With APA Style CENTRAL (60 minutes) details how faculty, librarians, and other instructors can use APA Style CENTRAL in teaching APA Style:

Writing Papers in APA Style CENTRAL (30 minutes) teaches end users how to create and save papers using APA Style CENTRAL:

For more information, including the full training schedule, visit the APA Style CENTRAL webinars page.

APA Style CENTRAL® Expert Tip: Citing Personal Communication

Posted on by Marta Soto in For Librarians, For Students

The purpose of a reference list in APA Style® is to acknowledge the work of previous scholars and provide a reliable way to locate that work.

What if you want to acknowledge a source that can’t be retrieved, such as a conversation, live lecture, or private letter?

This information should be treated as a personal communication, which is cited in the body of the paper but not included in the reference list.

You can cite a personal communication in your APA Style CENTRAL® paper by clicking the Personal Communication button in the editor menu or selecting from the Insert menu.

 

 

 

Once you provide the information needed—the individual’s name and the date of communication—the citation will appear in the paper body, including the words personal communication.

 

Because personal communications can’t be retrieved by a reader, they are not included in the reference listIn APA Style CENTRAL, you can edit personal communication in the body of your paper, as you would any other text.

 

Please note:

  • Research interviews with participants are NOT considered personal communication; they are qualitative data and should be reported in a way that respects confidentiality. For more, see this post on the APA Style blog.
  • If the communication was shared with you personally but is now retrievable—the conversation is on a discussion board, the lecture can be found on YouTube or a podcast, or the letter is published in a periodical or book—you can treat it as any other reference (i.e., create a reference to that retrievable source).

 

For more information, see the APA Style CENTRAL quick guide “Personal Communications.”

Related Resources

APA Style Blog: What Belongs in the Reference List?

APA Style Blog: How to Cite a Class in APA Style

APA Style Blog: Let’s Talk About Research Participants

APA Style CENTRAL® Update: Improved Searching of Learning Center Content

Posted on by Patti Avellanet in For Faculty, For Students

The search function in the Learning Center has been improved! APA Style CENTRAL recently added features and updated tools to help with your research and writing in APA Style (also see our previous blog posts for details about spell-check and appendices and citing within paper elements).

After discovering that users were not easily finding relevant quick guides, sample references, and other content when searching the Learning Center, we updated the behind-the-scenes indexing for the learning objects to make them easier to find.

You can now enter a variety of search terms without having to exactly match the terms used in the learning object’s description or title. All of the relevant parts of the search results are highlighted in yellow. If the answer can be found in both the learning object and an associated PDF in the LEARN MORE section, both will be highlighted.

For example: Searching for “chapter” results in highlighting of the quick guide title “Book Chapter Reference”; all instances of the word “chapter” in this quick guide’s DESCRIPTION heading; the video preview box in the THUMBNAIL section; and the text in the LEARN MORE section, “APA Style Guide to Electronic References, Examples 19-20″.

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Another notable example: Searching for “Bible” will display the “Citing References in Text” quick guide, with highlighting of the relevant section of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association that addresses the citation of classical works.

Let us know! If you search the Learning Center but don’t find what you’re looking for, please email us! Tell us what search term(s) you used and what you expected to find so that we can update the content indexing to improve the search functionality.

Search tip: To quickly clear your search terms from the search box or view all learning objects again, use the “Show all items” link to the left of the search box (see screenshot above).

Related resources:

Questions? Want to see more features added to APA Style CENTRAL?
Let us know!  support@apastylecentral.org