I thought about trying to write this post using only acronyms, but thought better of it. For those of you who use the APA citation style, adjusting to the new DOI (Digital Object Identifier) system can be a challenge. Often students will come to the reference desk asking for help with a reference page because they didn’t include DOI numbers and the professor marked up their reference page with red ink. APA style requires the use of DOI numbers. However, occasionally one will run into a reference that does not have a DOI no. This leaves you with the problem of trying to determine if the article you are citing has a DOI number or not. While you can look up references using a DOI number, usually you will already have the citation information for the reference. More likely, you are to have a citation and wonder if it has a DOI number or not. If this is the case, Cross Ref has a free tool that allows you to enter your full citation or what information you have, and will give you the DOI number for the article if it has one.
Here is an example for how to cite articles with and without DOI numbers.
