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How to Cite a Website in APA

This guide explains all of the important steps to referencing a website/web page in your APA research papers. The guidance below follows APA style, 7th edition.

APA format is much different than MLA format and other styles. If you need to cite websites in MLA , or you’re looking for more styles , check out the other resources on EasyBib.com!

Guide Overview

Here’s a run-through of everything this page includes:

What is a website? Am I citing a website or a web page?

Citing a website in the text (in-text citation), citing a website on the reference page, citing a general web article without an author, titles of pages on the web, extra information, publisher information, web addresses and dois, apa format for online news articles, additional website citation examples, troubleshooting.

A website is a place on the Internet that holds a group of individual pages (called web pages).

Think of a website like a tree. A website is the tree, and the individual web pages are the branches. Use YouTube as an example. YouTube is the site, and the individual channel pages and video pages are the branches. Wikipedia is a site, and each article has its own individual web page on that site.

Most of the time, you aren’t trying to cite a whole, entire site, but actually an individual web page. If you used a YouTube video to help you with your research project, you wouldn’t cite the entire YouTube site, you would cite the specific YouTube page the video was found on.

Here’s a similar question we’re often asked when it comes to the APA citation of a web page:

Q: This page describes citing specific pages and articles. Can I cite an entire site?

A: According to the APA manual (7th edition), it is not necessary to cite a site in its entirety in a reference list. Instead, include a reference to the website in the body of your paper and cite any web page individually.

The Department of Justice has just released a new site called ReportCrime.gov at https://www.reportcrime.gov/ to help people identify and report crimes in their area.

In the above passage, the website is stated in the text rather than cited. This guide focuses on how to cite individual pages found on the web (web pages). If you used an entire website, it’s perfectly acceptable to cite the whole site in the text of your paper, as shown above, but for the most part, you want to cite the page where the information was found.

If you’re seeking out an APA citation website to take the stress away from proper referencing, try out EasyBib.com! Stop typing into the search bar, “how to cite a website APA” or “APA in-text citation website.” EasyBib.com is the answer to your referencing questions and needs!

When you include a piece of information from a site in your project, you must include two citations: a brief citation in the text and also a full citation on the reference page.

When it comes to mentions in the text, students are sometimes tempted to put the web address in the body of a project. However, URLs can be long, clunky, and distracting. They should never be written in the body of a project.

Instead of writing the full address in the text, use the last name of the author and the date the source was published. If no author is shown, write the title of the individual page and the date.

For direct quotations, you may use paragraphs to indicate the quotation’s location in the work. Count the paragraphs manually if needed and use the abbreviation “para.” for paragraph.

Check out this in-text citation APA website example:

                 Cite your source

The above APA website in-text citation (the author’s last name and the date the information was published) corresponds to the information on the final page of the project, the reference page.

Here’s how the full APA citation for a web page looks on the final page of the project:

Need more in-text citation APA website info? Here’s more on how to build an APA parenthetical citation . You may also like our full-length guide on how to create an APA in-text citation .

If you’re looking for information on structuring other styles in the text of your paper, check out our page on MLA in-text and parenthetical citations .

In the next section of this APA citation website guide, we’re going to focus on how to format an APA website citation. If you’re wondering how to create an APA citation of a web page, the majority of web references use the structure shown below.

General structure for how to cite a website in APA

Note: A retrieval date is no longer required for online sources. It’s only needed if the content is likely to change over time (such as wikis and social media). The article or page title should be italicized. The URL is at the end and does not have a period after it.

Full reference example:

View Screenshot | Cite your source

Example of an in-text citation for a website in APA:

If you’re looking for an APA format website to do the work for you, try out EasyBib.com’s citation generator. Our APA citation website makes referencing a breeze!

APA citation for website structure:

Do you need to cite a source with no author in APA ? No problem. Wikipedia pages, online dictionary sites, and online encyclopedia sites are just a few examples of sites without an author. When there is no clear individual author, use the website organization (group author) as the author.

Group authors

There are plenty of times when an individual’s name isn’t listed as the author, but the information on the site is written by a group, organization, or company.

In an APA website citation, it is completely acceptable to use the group’s name in the author position. Type it out in its entirety and add a period at the end. Check out the various APA citation of web page examples at the bottom of the page to see group authors in action!

Note: If the author name and website name is the same, just list it once in as the author; leave out the website name section in the APA citation. 

APA citation for website example:

If you’re wondering whether to include the full date in your APA citation for web pages (month, day, and year) or just the year, we have the answer for you here.

An APA citation of web page reference includes the month, day, and year if it’s a site that is updated with new information frequently. Blog posts, newspaper articles, posts from social media profiles, and YouTube videos are just a few of the sources that would display the full date. In an APA citation for web pages, it’s written in this order in parentheses: (Year, Month Day).

If there is any information missing, simply include what is available. Also, if there is no date , indicate this by using (n.d.).

No date APA website example:

If you’re using the EasyBib citation generator to create an APA citation for a web page, our technology structures dates for you in their proper order. It’s the APA format website (and also the APA in-text citation website) you’ve been waiting for. Give it a whirl!

Here’s the advice we provide on many of our guides:

  • If the source you are citing is a standalone source, meaning an entire book, television series, or film, the title of such sources should be in italics.
  • If, however, you are citing a piece of a larger source, i.e., a journal article, a page on a site, or an episode of a show, the title should be in sentence case and not in italics.

Long story short, do not italicize an APA citation for web pages’ title in the text and on the final page of references.

For full references on the final page of the project, only include capital letters at the beginning of the title, at the beginning of each proper noun, and at the beginning of the first word in the subtitle.

The title is written in the text only when there isn’t an author listed. So, instead of showing the reference as (Author, Date), use (“Title of Page,” Date) in any APA citation for web pages. Notice the switch from sentence case to title case in the text reference.

A little extra information goes a long way when it comes to site citations. If you’re including a unique source type, include information about the medium directly after the title. This information is placed in brackets. Only the first letter is capitalized.

Here are a few examples you might see in an APA citation for a web page:

[Image attached]

[Infographic]

[Status update]

To see some of the extra information in action, scroll down to the examples towards the bottom of this page.

Speaking of extra information, it may not hurt to get some extra details on grammar topics in that brain of yours. Brush up on your adjective , pronoun , and interjection knowledge with our comprehensive guides!

Any information related to the publisher is not invited to the web citation party. In an APA citation of a web page, you do not need to include information about the company that made the site, where its offices are located, or any other similar information about the company in any web references. One thing less to worry about in your APA citation for web pages!

Other source types are much different, so before you exclude publisher information from all of your references, make sure you check out our APA citation page. While you’re at it, check out our other helpful resources, such as APA reference page  and MLA works cited .

We also need a web address and DOI number in an APA citation for a web page. Including site addresses and DOIs are an absolute necessity. Addresses and DOIs (which stand for direct object identifiers) are usually the last item in an APA website citation.

For sites, after adding the full URL to the APA citation for a web page, do not end it with a period. If the address is very long, it is acceptable to roll it onto the next line, but break it up so that a type of punctuation mark or symbol is the first item closest to the left margin. Check out the APA citation of a webpage URL below.

APA citation of a webpage example of a properly structured URL:

DOI numbers are assigned by publishers to electronic sources such as journal articles, e-books, datasets, and more. They’re a string of numbers and sometimes other characters. If the source you’re using has a DOI number assigned to it, place it at the end of the APA website citation, instead of the URL, in this format: https://doi.org/10.XXXXXXXXX. Place the DOI string in place of the X’s shown above.

DOIs were created to combat the problem of broken links and 404 errors (pages taken down). Think about it: if a webpage is taken off of the Internet, it can be pretty difficult to find a copy of it. If you’re lucky, an archive site may have a copy stored somewhere, but for the most part, when sites are gone, they’re gone. DOIs are permanent, making them the ideal choice to include in any APA citation for webpages.

APA properly structured DOI:

APA differentiates between traditional newspapers that are online versus news websites with no daily/weekly/monthly newspaper or magazine edition. Unsure what you’re citing? Follow this decision tree:

  • YES –> Cite it as a newspaper article.
  • NO –> Cite it as a web page or a news site article.
  • NO –> Cite it as a web page or news site article.

Online news article APA example:

News sites with no associated daily/weekly/monthly publication should be cited like a web page. That means the article title is italicized and the publisher/site name is in plan font. This format applies to articles from these sites:

  • MSNBC Fox News

Newspaper article online APA example:

Sites associated with a daily/weekly/monthly publication should be cited as a newspaper article. That means the article title is in plain font and the publisher/site name is italicized. This format applies to articles from these sites:

  • The New York Times
  • The Guardian
  • The Times of India
  • The Wall Street Journal
  • The Washington Post
  • Yomiuri Shimbun

Below are various web reference examples to give you a quick visual of how pages are structured and organized. Quick reminder that if you’re trying to create a reference for an e-book found on the web, use the APA book citation page. In addition, if it’s an online article from journal, use our APA journal page.

If you’re looking for a quick and easy way to build your references, EasyBib.com is an APA citation website that does the work for you. Try it out and say hello to stress-free referencing and goodbye to constantly searching for “how to cite a website APA” or “how to cite APA” on search engines. The APA offers more information here .

How to cite a group/organization/company:

How to cite a blog post in apa:.

The structure is the same, but the format is slightly different: The blog article title is in plain text, and the name of the blog is italicized.

APA citation of a web page example for Facebook:

The text of the post is italicized, while the site name (Facebook) is in plain text.

APA citation of a web page example for Twitter:

Cite your source

If the name of the author is unknown, start the APA citation of a web page for Twitter with the username.

Need another set of eyes to check your paper for grammar and spelling edits? Not quite sure if every determiner , preposition , or conjunction is where it belongs? Check out our grammar and plagiarism checker . It’s the answer to all of your grammar questions!

If you’re still confused and typing into the search bar, “how to cite APA” or “how to cite a website APA,” try out EasyBib.com’s reference generator. It’s fast, easy, and allows you to focus on your writing and research, and less on your references. The best part? It creates both types of references. It has an in-text citation website APA generator and also a full reference generator! What are you waiting for? Go see the magic happen!

Here’s a quick video overview of how to cite a website in APA:

Solution #1: Determining the website company, the author, the publisher, or both (APA)

A website citation included in an APA-format bibliography doesn’t need a publisher, so you do not need to worry whether the website company is the publisher of a page you want to cite!

If an author isn’t credited on a given webpage, the website company should be listed as the author. This also goes for online encyclopedias, dictionaries, etc.

Here’s an example for a full bibliography:

Roman empire. (2022, February 6). In Wikipedia . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire

Here is an example for an in-text citation:

(“Roman Empire,” 2022)

Solution #2: How to cite images and videos from social media in APA format

Making a bibliographic citation for a photo or video from social media is similar to making a citation for any website. Examples that fall into this category include photos, videos, or social media-specific mediums like highlights, reels, moments, or lives.

For your full citation in your bibliography, use the caption of the photo or video, up to 20 words, as the title. Denote the style of media in brackets, following the title.

For sources like Instagram Reels, Highlights, and other media whose exact date of posting is hard to discern, include the date you found and cited the photo or video rather than the original date the media was shared.

Here are examples of bibliographic citations:

World Wildlife Foundation [wwf]. (2021, October 20). This year marks our 60 years of action for people and nature. Together, we’ve done so much… [Photo]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/CVQQbF_KmA6/

New York Times [nytimes]. (n.d.) NYC Marathon 2021 [Highlight]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/stories/highlights/17928514339867051/

Here are the corresponding in-text citations:

(World Wildlife Foundation, 2021)

(New York Times, 2021)

Solution #3: How emojis are cited in APA format

If the website or social media post you are citing contains an emoji, keep the emoji in your full bibliographic citation without altering it.

Reference list example:

Grande, A [arianagrande]. (2021, October 18) the final #voicebattles begin tonight @nbcthevoice.🧚🏼‍♂️ thank you @kchenoweth, i love you. [Photo]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/CVLfY_vv_3c/

In-text citation example:

(Grande, 2021)

If you have trouble pasting the emoji into your full citation, put the emoji’s name followed by the word “emoji” all in brackets within your citation instead. Use Unicode’s Emoji Charts to look up the widely accepted, technical name of the emoji you want to cite.

Grande, A [arianagrande]. the final the final #voicebattles  begin tonight  @nbcthevoice . [woman fairy emoji] thank you  @kchenoweth , i love you. [Photo]. Instagram. https://www.instagram.com/p/CVLfY_vv_3c/

This guide is not officially associated with the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, but it does provide information in line with the manual. 

APA Formatting Guide

APA Formatting

  • Annotated Bibliography
  • Block Quotes
  • et al Usage
  • In-text Citations
  • Multiple Authors
  • Paraphrasing
  • Page Numbers
  • Parenthetical Citations
  • Reference Page
  • Sample Paper
  • APA 7 Updates
  • View APA Guide

Citation Examples

  • Book Chapter
  • Journal Article
  • Magazine Article
  • Newspaper Article
  • Website (no author)
  • View all APA Examples

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You will need the webpage’s author’s name, publication date, title of the page, website name, and the URL.

Here is an example with an author:

Geggel, L. (2021, July 6). A brief history of dinosaurs . LiveScience. https://www.livescience.com/3945-history-dinosaurs.html

Usually, if no author is shown the website is assumed to be the author. In these cases, the website name replaces the author name in the beginning of the reference.

For example:

National Park Service. (2018, July 23). Night skies as a cultural-historical resource . https://www.nps.gov/subjects/nightskies/cultural.htm

The URL of a website is mandatory if you cite a website or a webpage. Where you include the URL depends on the type of citation. To cite a website as a general reference without any reference to a specific page or particular details, simply add the name of the website in the text and include the URL in parentheses. There is no need to add a reference list entry. However, to cite a webpage on a website, you need to provide both an in-text citation and a reference list entry. Do not add the URL in the in-text citation. Just add the author’s name and year. The URL is given only in the reference list entry. Templates for in-text citations and reference list entries of a website or webpage along with examples are given below.

Website as a general reference

In-text style:

We took the data from the Office of the Registrar General & Census Commissioner, India (https://censusindia.gov.in/).

Webpage of a website

In-text citation templates and examples:

Author Surname (publication year)

Skelton (2017)

Parenthetical:

(Author Surname, publication year)

(Skelton, 2017)

Note that month and day are not mentioned in in-text citations.

Reference list entry template and example:

Author Surname, F. M. (Year, Month Day). Title of the webpage. Name of the Site. URL

Skelton, R. (2017, February 16). Fact check’s return perfect timing in ‘post truth’ age. ABC Opinion. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-16/fact-check-return-perfect-timing-in-post-truth-age/8277268

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A Literature Review: Website Design and User Engagement

Renee garett.

1 ElevateU, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Sean D. Young

2 University of California Institute for Prediction Technology, Department of Family Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

3 UCLA Center for Digital Behavior, Department of Family Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Proper design has become a critical element needed to engage website and mobile application users. However, little research has been conducted to define the specific elements used in effective website and mobile application design. We attempt to review and consolidate research on effective design and to define a short list of elements frequently used in research. The design elements mentioned most frequently in the reviewed literature were navigation, graphical representation, organization, content utility, purpose, simplicity, and readability. We discuss how previous studies define and evaluate these seven elements. This review and the resulting short list of design elements may be used to help designers and researchers to operationalize best practices for facilitating and predicting user engagement.

1. INTRODUCTION

Internet usage has increased tremendously and rapidly in the past decade ( “Internet Use Over Time,” 2014 ). Websites have become the most important public communication portal for most, if not all, businesses and organizations. As of 2014, 87% of American adults aged 18 or older are Internet users ( “Internet User Demographics,” 2013 ). Because business-to-consumer interactions mainly occur online, website design is critical in engaging users ( Flavián, Guinalíu, & Gurrea, 2006 ; Lee & Kozar, 2012 ; Petre, Minocha, & Roberts, 2006 ). Poorly designed websites may frustrate users and result in a high “bounce rate”, or people visiting the entrance page without exploring other pages within the site ( Google.com, 2015 ). On the other hand, a well-designed website with high usability has been found to positively influence visitor retention (revisit rates) and purchasing behavior ( Avouris, Tselios, Fidas, & Papachristos, 2003 ; Flavián et al., 2006 ; Lee & Kozar, 2012 ).

Little research, however, has been conducted to define the specific elements that constitute effective website design. One of the key design measures is usability ( International Standardization Organization, 1998 ). The International Standardized Organization (ISO) defines usability as the extent to which users can achieve desired tasks (e.g., access desired information or place a purchase) with effectiveness (completeness and accuracy of the task), efficiency (time spent on the task), and satisfaction (user experience) within a system. However, there is currently no consensus on how to properly operationalize and assess website usability ( Lee & Kozar, 2012 ). For example, Nielson associates usability with learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, and satisfaction ( Nielsen, 2012 ). Yet, Palmer (2002) postulates that usability is determined by download time, navigation, content, interactivity, and responsiveness. Similar to usability, many other key design elements, such as scannability, readability, and visual aesthetics, have not yet been clearly defined ( Bevan, 1997 ; Brady & Phillips, 2003 ; Kim, Lee, Han, & Lee, 2002 ), and there are no clear guidelines that individuals can follow when designing websites to increase engagement.

This review sought to address that question by identifying and consolidating the key website design elements that influence user engagement according to prior research studies. This review aimed to determine the website design elements that are most commonly shown or suggested to increase user engagement. Based on these findings, we listed and defined a short list of website design elements that best facilitate and predict user engagement. The work is thus an exploratory research providing definitions for these elements of website design and a starting point for future research to reference.

2. MATERIALS AND METHODS

2.1. selection criteria and data extraction.

We searched for articles relating to website design on Google Scholar (scholar.google.com) because Google Scholar consolidates papers across research databases (e.g., Pubmed) and research on design is listed in multiple databases. We used the following combination of keywords: design, usability, and websites. Google Scholar yielded 115,000 total hits. However, due to the large list of studies generated, we decided to only review the top 100 listed research studies for this exploratory study. Our inclusion criteria for the studies was: (1) publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal, (2) publication in English, and (3) publication in or after 2000. Year of publication was chosen as a limiting factor so that we would have enough years of research to identify relevant studies but also have results that relate to similar styles of websites after the year 2000. We included studies that were experimental or theoretical (review papers and commentaries) in nature. Resulting studies represented a diverse range of disciplines, including human-computer interaction, marketing, e-commerce, interface design, cognitive science, and library science. Based on these selection criteria, thirty-five unique studies remained and were included in this review.

2.2. Final Search Term

(design) and (usability) and (websites).

The search terms were kept simple to capture the higher level design/usability papers and allow Google scholar’s ranking method to filter out the most popular studies. This method also allowed studies from a large range of fields to be searched.

2.3. Analysis

The literature review uncovered 20 distinct design elements commonly discussed in research that affect user engagement. They were (1) organization – is the website logically organized, (2) content utility – is the information provided useful or interesting, (3) navigation – is the website easy to navigate, (4) graphical representation – does the website utilize icons, contrasting colors, and multimedia content, (5) purpose – does the website clearly state its purpose (i.e. personal, commercial, or educational), (6) memorable elements – does the website facilitate returning users to navigate the site effectively (e.g., through layout or graphics), (7) valid links – does the website provide valid links, (8) simplicity – is the design of the website simple, (9) impartiality – is the information provided fair and objective, (10) credibility – is the information provided credible, (11) consistency/reliability – is the website consistently designed (i.e., no changes in page layout throughout the site), (12) accuracy – is the information accurate, (13) loading speed – does the website take a long time to load, (14) security/privacy – does the website securely transmit, store, and display personal information/data, (15) interactive – can the user interact with the website (e.g., post comments or receive recommendations for similar purchases), (16) strong user control capabilities– does the website allow individuals to customize their experiences (such as the order of information they access and speed at which they browse the website), (17) readability – is the website easy to read and understand (e.g., no grammatical/spelling errors), (18) efficiency – is the information presented in a way that users can find the information they need quickly, (19) scannability – can users pick out relevant information quickly, and (20) learnability – how steep is the learning curve for using the website. For each of the above, we calculated the proportion of studies mentioning the element. In this review, we provide a threshold value of 30%. We identified elements that were used in at least 30% of the studies and include these elements that are above the threshold on a short list of elements used in research on proper website design. The 30% value was an arbitrary threshold picked that would provide researchers and designers with a guideline list of elements described in research on effective web design. To provide further information on how to apply this list, we present specific details on how each of these elements was discussed in research so that it can be defined and operationalized.

3.1. Popular website design elements ( Table 1 )

Frequency of website design elements used in research (2000–2014)

Seven of the website design elements met our threshold requirement for review. Navigation was the most frequently discussed element, mentioned in 22 articles (62.86%). Twenty-one studies (60%) highlighted the importance of graphics. Fifteen studies (42.86%) emphasized good organization. Four other elements also exceeded the threshold level, and they were content utility (n=13, 37.14%), purpose (n=11, 31.43%), simplicity (n=11, 31.43%), and readability (n=11, 31.43%).

Elements below our minimum requirement for review include memorable features (n=5, 14.29%), links (n=10, 28.57%), impartiality (n=1, 2.86%), credibility (n=7, 20%), consistency/reliability (n=8. 22.86%), accuracy (n=5, 14.29%), loading speed (n=10, 28.57%), security/privacy (n=2, 5.71%), interactive features (n=9, 25.71%), strong user control capabilities (n=8, 22.86%), efficiency (n=6, 17.14%), scannability (n=1, 2.86%), and learnability (n=2, 5.71%).

3.2. Defining key design elements for user engagement ( Table 2 )

Definitions of Key Design Elements

In defining and operationalizing each of these elements, the research studies suggested that effective navigation is the presence of salient and consistent menu/navigation bars, aids for navigation (e.g., visible links), search features, and easy access to pages (multiple pathways and limited clicks/backtracking). Engaging graphical presentation entails 1) inclusion of images, 2) proper size and resolution of images, 3) multimedia content, 4) proper color, font, and size of text, 5) use of logos and icons, 6) attractive visual layout, 7) color schemes, and 8) effective use of white space. Optimal organization includes 1) cognitive architecture, 2) logical, understandable, and hierarchical structure, 3) information arrangement and categorization, 4) meaningful labels/headings/titles, and 5) use of keywords. Content utility is determined by 1) sufficient amount of information to attract repeat visitors, 2) arousal/motivation (keeps visitors interested and motivates users to continue exploring the site), 3) content quality, 4) information relevant to the purpose of the site, and 5) perceived utility based on user needs/requirements. The purpose of a website is clear when it 1) establishes a unique and visible brand/identity, 2) addresses visitors’ intended purpose and expectations for visiting the site, and 3) provides information about the organization and/or services. Simplicity is achieved by using 1) simple subject headings, 2) transparency of information (reduce search time), 3) website design optimized for computer screens, 4) uncluttered layout, 5) consistency in design throughout website, 6) ease of using (including first-time users), 7) minimize redundant features, and 8) easily understandable functions. Readability is optimized by content that is 1) easy to read, 2) well-written, 3) grammatically correct, 4) understandable, 5) presented in readable blocks, and 6) reading level appropriate.

4. DISCUSSION

The seven website design elements most often discussed in relation to user engagement in the reviewed studies were navigation (62.86%), graphical representation (60%), organization (42.86%), content utility (37.14%), purpose (31.43%), simplicity (31.43%), and readability (31.43%). These seven elements exceeded our threshold level of 30% representation in the literature and were included into a short list of website design elements to operationalize effective website design. For further analysis, we reviewed how studies defined and evaluated these seven elements. This may allow designers and researchers to determine and follow best practices for facilitating or predicting user engagement.

A remaining challenge is that the definitions of website design elements often overlap. For example, several studies evaluated organization by how well a website incorporates cognitive architecture, logical and hierarchical structure, systematic information arrangement and categorization, meaningful headings and labels, and keywords. However, these features are also crucial in navigation design. Also, the implications of using distinct logos and icons go beyond graphical representation. Logos and icons also establish unique brand/identity for the organization (purpose) and can serve as visual aids for navigation. Future studies are needed to develop distinct and objective measures to assess these elements and how they affect user engagement ( Lee & Kozar, 2012 ).

Given the rapid increase in both mobile technology and social media use, it is surprising that no studies mentioned cross-platform compatibility and social media integration. In 2013, 34% of cellphone owners primarily use their cellphones to access the Internet, and this number continues to grow ( “Mobile Technology Factsheet,” 2013 ). With the rise of different mobile devices, users are also diversifying their web browser use. Internet Explorer (IE) was once the leading web browser. However, in recent years, FireFox, Safari, and Chrome have gained significant traction ( W3schools.com, 2015 ). Website designers and researchers must be mindful of different platforms and browsers to minimize the risk of losing users due to compatibility issues. In addition, roughly 74% of American Internet users use some form of social media ( Duggan, Ellison, Lampe, Lenhart, & Smith, 2015 ), and social media has emerged as an effective platform for organizations to target and interact with users. Integrating social media into website design may increase user engagement by facilitating participation and interactivity.

There are several limitations to the current review. First, due to the large number of studies published in this area and due to this study being exploratory, we selected from the first 100 research publications on Google Scholar search results. Future studies may benefit from defining design to a specific topic, set of years, or other area to limit the number of search results. Second, we did not quantitatively evaluate the effectiveness of these website design elements. Additional research can help to better quantify these elements.

It should also be noted that different disciplines and industries have different objectives in designing websites and should thus prioritize different website design elements. For example, online businesses and marketers seek to design websites that optimize brand loyalty, purchase, and profit ( Petre et al., 2006 ). Others, such as academic researchers or healthcare providers, are more likely to prioritize privacy/confidentiality, and content accuracy in building websites ( Horvath, Ecklund, Hunt, Nelson, & Toomey, 2015 ). Ultimately, we advise website designers and researchers to consider the design elements delineated in this review, along with their unique needs, when developing user engagement strategies.

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Writing Center Home Page

OASIS: Writing Center

Reference list: webpages, introduction.

Although not all open web materials are appropriate as scholarly evidence, some web content is appropriate such as technical research reports published online and open access peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Additionally, you may encounter some assignments that ask you to find and cite other web content.

APA 7 acknowledges that distinguishing between various online resources can be difficult since many types of work are now available online (see Section 9.2). When referring to a source accessed from a webpage, you first need to determine what type of material it is. The information could be a journal or magazine article, a personal webpage, an organization’s webpage, an institutional report, a blog post, or an online reference work. Follow APA's guidelines on the reference category first, followed by additional information on the method of retrieval as necessary.

In addition to knowing the type of material, you will also need to assess the website for accuracy and scholarship. For tips on evaluating resources, please visit the Walden Library's  Evaluating Methods webpage . To learn more about differentiating between primary and secondary sources and evaluating electronic sources, check out the Walden Library’s  Evaluating Resources webinar .

We cover online journal articles on a different page, so here we focus on other web content.

When just mentioning the existence of a particular website in text, there is no need to provide a full citation. You can just include the URL in parentheses in the body of your paper. Here is an example:

To begin my content analysis, I read all of the articles posted in January 2018 on CNN's website (www.cnn.com).

However, if you are providing information from a particular webpage, you need to cite it in the text with author and date as you would other sources:

According to the Vartan (2018), the United States has no mandated number of days off for employees.

You should then include a full reference list entry for the source:

Vartan, S. (2018, January 30). Why vacations matter for your health . CNN. https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/why-vacations-matter/index.html

These are the elements of the reference list entry for the web page cited above:

  • Author . List individual authors as usual, with surname first followed by first and middle initials. When there is no individual author noted, use the organization’s name as the author.
  • Date . To determine the publication year, look for information about when the page was published or created, sometimes at the bottom of the page. Avoid using the copyright date that might be listed at the bottom of every page of the website. Also, note that the APA style experts do not recommend using "last reviewed" dates since those do not always give an accurate sense of when the page was published or if changes were made when it was last reviewed. APA also recommends using the most specific date provided, so if a month and day are available, include those as well. If you cannot find a year listed, use n.d. (meaning no date) in place of the year.
  • Webpage title . Use the page's unique title. The title can occasionally be difficult to determine because webpages have many layers. It might help to scan the page's menu bars to identify the title. Italicize the title of the webpage and use sentence case capitalization. (Note that APA 6 guidelines did not italicize webpage titles.)
  • Organization or website name . List the organization or website name after the webpage title in plain text. If the webpage does not have a specific author, use the organization name in place of the author at the start of the reference entry and leave it out in this place.
  • URL . Give the URL for the specific page and not the organization’s home page. For webpages that include content that is meant to be regularly updated or change over time, include a retrieval date before the URL. Otherwise, include just the URL.The URL can be formatted as automatically hyperlinked in Microsoft Word in blue text and underlined. (Note that APA 6 recommended removing text formatting from the URL, but APA 7 recommends keeping the live hyperlinks for any document meant to be read on a screen.)

Other Webpage Nuances

Retrieval date . A retrieval date is only included if the information is likely to change over time. Some examples provided by APA 7 include UpToDate articles, social media pages or profiles, maps generated by Google Maps, and other website content that updates frequently. Because the example provided above a web page does not have content that is regularly added or changed, the retrieval date is not necessary.

Direct quotations . If you are directly quoting from the web page, you will not be able to include a page number (because there are no pages). Instead, count the paragraphs from the top of the page to determine the paragraph number. Here is an example:

"Jackie has a family history of cancer. Several relatives on her father’s side of the family had breast or ovarian cancer at an early age. Her doctor encouraged her to see a genetic counselor" (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, n.d., para. 2).

Webpage Reference Entry Video

  • Commonly Cited Sources: Web Page Reference Entry (video transcript)

Visit the Common Reference List Examples page.

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APA Style Examples

  • Books/eBooks
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  • Unpublished/Not retrievable
  • Stats/Figures
  • Ask a Librarian
  • Webpage with a group author
  • Additional examples

REFERENCE (ONE AUTHOR)

(For more examples, see p. 350-352 of the 7th edition or visit the APA Style site) * Please note : If multiple webpages from a website are cited, create a reference for each.  If mentioning a website in general, do not create a reference list entry or in-text citation. Instead, include the name of the website in text and provide the URL in parentheses.

If the author's name and the website's name are the same, omit the website's name from the reference.

[ APA Webpage ]

  IN TEXT 

Parenthetical citation: (Buterbaugh, 2016).

Narrative citation: Buterbaugh ( 2016 )

REFERENCE (FIVE AUTHORS)

Annetta, L. A., Murray, M. R., Laird, S. G., Bohr, S. C., & Park, J. C. (2006, January 1). Serious games: Incorporating video games in the classroom . EDUCAUSE. http://er.educause.edu/articles/2006/1/serious-games-incorporating-video-games-in-the-classroom

IN TEXT 

Parenthetical citation:  (Annetta et al., 2006).

Narrative citation:  Annetta et al. (2006)

(For more examples, see p. 351 of the 7th edition) * Please note : If multiple webpages from a website are cited, create a reference for each.  If mentioning a website in general, do not create a reference list entry or in-text citation. Instead, include the name of the website in text and provide the URL in parentheses.

[ APA webpage with a group author ]

     IN TEXT  

Parenthetical citation: (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019).

Narrative citation: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention  ( 2019 )

REFERENCE (NO AUTHOR)

(For more examples, see p. 291 and p. 329 example 49 of the 7th edition)

[ APA webpage with no author ]

      IN TEXT 

Parenthetical citation: ("Helping the Student," 2015).

Narrative citation: "Helping the Student" (2015)

  • Additional examples of citing web pages
  • Additional example: web page with no author, no year, and no page numbers

REFERENCE (NO AUTHOR AND NO DATE)

Anxiety disorder symptoms, causes and effects. (n.d.). In PsychGuides . http://www.psychguides.com/guides/anxiety-disorder-symptoms-causes-and-effects

Parenthetical citation: ("Anxiety disorder symptoms," n.d.).

Narrative citation: "Anxiety disorder symptoms" (n.d.)

  • Comment on a webpage on a news website
  • Webpage on a website with a retrieval date (the content of a page is designed to change over time but isn't archived)
  • Whole website references

Consult the  Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 7th ed.  for more examples of Webpages and Websites reference citations (beginning on page 350, section 10.16)

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How to Cite a Website

Last Updated: February 9, 2023 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Michelle Golden, PhD and by wikiHow staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD . Michelle Golden is an English teacher in Athens, Georgia. She received her MA in Language Arts Teacher Education in 2008 and received her PhD in English from Georgia State University in 2015. There are 7 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 3,557,039 times.

If you're writing a research paper, you'll likely do quite a bit of research online. If you have websites that you want to use as sources for your paper, an entry for the website must appear in the reference list (also called the bibliography or Works Cited) at the end of your paper. You'll also include a citation in-text at the end of any sentence in which you've paraphrased or quoted information that appeared on that website. While the information you need to provide is generally the same across all methods, the way you format that information may vary depending on whether you're using the Modern Language Association (MLA), American Psychological Association (APA), or Chicago style of citation.

Sample Citation Templates

research paper on web pages

  • Example: Claymore, Crystal.
  • If no individual author is listed, but the website is produced by a government agency, organization, or business, use that name as the author. For example, if you're using a CDC web page as a source, you would list the author as "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

Tip: For your entire Works Cited entry, if an element doesn't exist or isn't provided, simply skip that part of the citation and move on to the next part.

Step 2 Provide the title of the page in double quotation marks.

  • Example: Claymore, Crystal. "Best-Kept Secrets for Amazing Cupcake Frosting."

Step 3 Give the name of the website in italics followed by the date of publication.

  • Example: Claymore, Crystal. "Best-Kept Secrets for Amazing Cupcake Frosting." Crystal's Cupcakes , 24 Sept. 2018,

Step 4 Include the URL for the web page.

  • Example: Claymore, Crystal. "Best-Kept Secrets for Amazing Cupcake Frosting." Crystal's Cupcakes , 24 Sept. 2018, www.crystalscupcakes.com/amazing-frosting.

Step 5 Close with your date of access if there was no date of publication.

  • Example: Claymore, Crystal. "Best-Kept Secrets for Amazing Cupcake Frosting." Crystal's Cupcakes , www.crystalscupcakes.com/amazing-frosting. Accessed 14 Feb. 2019.

MLA Works Cited Format:

Author Last Name, First Name. "Title of Web Page in Title Case." Name of Website , Day Month Year of publication, URL. Accessed Day Month Year.

Step 6 Place a parenthetical citation after referencing the website in your text.

  • For example, you might write: "The best cupcake frosting techniques are often the least intuitive (Claymore)."
  • If you include the author's name in your text, there's no need for a parenthetical citation. For example, you might write: "Award-winning baker Crystal Claymore wasn't afraid to give away all her secrets, sharing her favorite frosting techniques on her website."

Step 1 Start your reference list entry with the name of the author.

  • Example: Canadian Cancer Society.

Step 2 Add the year the website or page was published.

  • Example: Canadian Cancer Society. (2017).
  • If you're citing several pages from the same website that were published in the same year, add a lower-case letter to the end of the year so you can differentiate them in your in-text citations. For example, you might have "2017a" and "2017b."

Step 3 Type the title of the web page in sentence case.

  • Example: Canadian Cancer Society. (2017). Cancer research.
  • If the content you're citing is a stand-alone document, the title should be italicized. This will usually be the case if you're citing a PDF document that appears on a website. If you're not sure, use your best judgment in deciding whether to italicize it or not.

Step 4 Close with the direct URL of the web page.

  • Example: Canadian Cancer Society. (2017). Cancer research. Retrieved from http://www.cancer.ca/en/cancer-information/cancer-101/cancer-research/?region=on

APA Reference List Format:

Author Last Name, A. A. (Year). Title of web page in sentence case. Retrieved from URL

Step 5 Use the author's name and year for in-text parenthetical citations.

  • For example, you might write: "Clinical trials are used to test new cancer treatments (Canadian Cancer Society, 2017)."
  • If you include the author's name in your text, place the year in parentheses immediately after the author's name. For example, you might write: "The Canadian Cancer Society (2017) noted that Canada is a global leader in clinical trials of cancer treatments."

Step 1 Start your bibliographic entry with the name of the author.

  • Example: UN Women.

Step 2 List the title of the web page in double quotation marks.

  • Example: UN Women. "Commission on the Status of Women."

Step 3 Add the name of the website or publishing organization in italics.

  • Example: UN Women. "Commission on the Status of Women." UN Women .

Step 4 Provide the publication date or access date.

  • Example: UN Women. "Commission on the Status of Women." UN Women . Accessed February 14, 2019.

Step 5 Close your entry with a direct URL to the web page.

  • Example: UN Women. "Commission on the Status of Women." UN Women . Accessed February 14, 2019. http://www.unwomen.org/en/csw.

Chicago Bibliography Format:

Author Last Name, First Name. "Title of Web Page in Title Case." Name of Website or Publishing Organization . Accessed Month Day, Year. URL.

Step 6 Use commas instead of periods between elements in footnotes.

  • Example: UN Women, "Commission on the Status of Women," UN Women , accessed February 14, 2019, http://www.unwomen.org/en/csw.

Community Q&A

wikiHow Staff Editor

You Might Also Like

Cite an Interview in MLA Format

  • ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/mla_style/mla_formatting_and_style_guide/mla_works_cited_electronic_sources.html
  • ↑ https://libguides.up.edu/mla/common/websites
  • ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/reference_list_electronic_sources.html
  • ↑ https://libraryguides.vu.edu.au/apa-referencing/7Webpages
  • ↑ https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/webpage-website-references
  • ↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/chicago_manual_17th_edition/cmos_formatting_and_style_guide/web_sources.html
  • ↑ http://libanswers.snhu.edu/faq/48009

About This Article

Michelle Golden, PhD

To cite a website in text using MLA formatting, include the author's last name in parentheses at the end of the sentence you're using the source in. If there is no author, include the title of the web page instead. If you're using APA formatting, include the author's last name followed by a comma and the year of publication in parentheses at the end of the sentence. If you don't know the author's name, use the name of the web page instead. For more tips from our English co-author, like how to cite a website in Chicago style, scroll down! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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The top list of academic search engines

academic search engines

1. Google Scholar

4. science.gov, 5. semantic scholar, 6. baidu scholar, get the most out of academic search engines, frequently asked questions about academic search engines, related articles.

Academic search engines have become the number one resource to turn to in order to find research papers and other scholarly sources. While classic academic databases like Web of Science and Scopus are locked behind paywalls, Google Scholar and others can be accessed free of charge. In order to help you get your research done fast, we have compiled the top list of free academic search engines.

Google Scholar is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only lets you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free but also often provides links to full-text PDF files.

  • Coverage: approx. 200 million articles
  • Abstracts: only a snippet of the abstract is available
  • Related articles: ✔
  • References: ✔
  • Cited by: ✔
  • Links to full text: ✔
  • Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, Vancouver, RIS, BibTeX

Search interface of Google Scholar

BASE is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany. That is also where its name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

  • Coverage: approx. 136 million articles (contains duplicates)
  • Abstracts: ✔
  • Related articles: ✘
  • References: ✘
  • Cited by: ✘
  • Export formats: RIS, BibTeX

Search interface of Bielefeld Academic Search Engine aka BASE

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open-access research papers. For each search result, a link to the full-text PDF or full-text web page is provided.

  • Coverage: approx. 136 million articles
  • Links to full text: ✔ (all articles in CORE are open access)
  • Export formats: BibTeX

Search interface of the CORE academic search engine

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need anymore to query all those resources separately!

  • Coverage: approx. 200 million articles and reports
  • Links to full text: ✔ (available for some databases)
  • Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX (available for some databases)

Search interface of Science.gov

Semantic Scholar is the new kid on the block. Its mission is to provide more relevant and impactful search results using AI-powered algorithms that find hidden connections and links between research topics.

  • Coverage: approx. 40 million articles
  • Export formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX

Search interface of Semantic Scholar

Although Baidu Scholar's interface is in Chinese, its index contains research papers in English as well as Chinese.

  • Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 100 million articles
  • Abstracts: only snippets of the abstract are available
  • Export formats: APA, MLA, RIS, BibTeX

Search interface of Baidu Scholar

RefSeek searches more than one billion documents from academic and organizational websites. Its clean interface makes it especially easy to use for students and new researchers.

  • Coverage: no detailed statistics available, approx. 1 billion documents
  • Abstracts: only snippets of the article are available
  • Export formats: not available

Search interface of RefSeek

Consider using a reference manager like Paperpile to save, organize, and cite your references. Paperpile integrates with Google Scholar and many popular databases, so you can save references and PDFs directly to your library using the Paperpile buttons:

research paper on web pages

Google Scholar is an academic search engine, and it is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only let's you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free, but also often provides links to full text PDF file.

Semantic Scholar is a free, AI-powered research tool for scientific literature developed at the Allen Institute for AI. Sematic Scholar was publicly released in 2015 and uses advances in natural language processing to provide summaries for scholarly papers.

BASE , as its name suggest is an academic search engine. It is hosted at Bielefeld University in Germany and that's where it name stems from (Bielefeld Academic Search Engine).

CORE is an academic search engine dedicated to open access research papers. For each search result a link to the full text PDF or full text web page is provided.

Science.gov is a fantastic resource as it bundles and offers free access to search results from more than 15 U.S. federal agencies. There is no need any more to query all those resources separately!

research paper on web pages

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5 Best Tools to Annotate and Highlight Web Pages for Research and Study

These free tools let you annotate or highlight any part of a web page to share it with others or use as reference for your research.

When you share a link with someone, the relevant part is just a tiny snippet or two. Use these free tools to annotate or highlight the important part to draw attention to it.

All the apps in the article have a highlight marker (often with different colors) and a way to write sticky notes or comments anywhere on the page. Both features are excellent when you want to add notes for research and study, whether for your personal needs or friends. Beyond that, a few small features make each tool better for different needs.

1. Diigo (Chrome, Bookmarklet, Android, iOS): Annotations, Highlights, Comments on Any Web Page

Diigo is one of the oldest and most popular online annotation tools. Of course, it has changed a lot over the years, but it is a simple and reliable app to add highlights and comments to any web page at its core.

Available as a Chrome extension or a bookmarklet for other browsers, Diigo is intuitive to use. Select any text on any article, and you can highlight it in one of four colors. You can also add a small note to the highlight or a floating note anywhere on the page. You can also share notes with collaborators, and you can change their colors too. As Diigo says in its help section, you might want to mentally assign a specific purpose to each color, thus keeping your highlights organized for your eyes.

All annotations on a page can be seen quickly through the extension shortcut. You can also view and organize annotations in the web dashboard for Diigo. You can create groups in Diigo and share annotations and highlights with them and as PDFs.

Diigo is also a bookmark app, saving each page and its annotations to your account and syncing it across devices. On phones, Diigo is available as a standalone browser with many of the same features.

Download: Diigo for Chrome | Bookmarklet (Free)

Download: Diigo Browser for Android | iOS (Free)

2. Smort (Web): Annotate and Edit Articles to Share With Friends

Most annotation apps will only let you add highlights, sticky notes, and comments to the article. Smort enables you to change the article contents itself, remove entire paragraphs or images, add text, etc. And you don't need to install anything to do this either.

When you want to share any article, add "smort.io" before the URL and press Enter to open it in the Smort editor. Here, you can edit the article as you see fit, with a simple Markdown editor to change text and text formatting. Smort also supports highlights of four different colors, so you can add a note at the top of the article about what each color means. There are handy Undo and Redo buttons at the top if you make any mistakes.

Smort auto-generates a table of contents for each article to make navigation easier. As the editor, you can also switch between four different font types and a dark or light mode for easier reading. Once you've finished editing, click the Share button to generate a unique link that lasts for seven days from creation. After that, if you make further edits, you'll need to regenerate a new link and reshare.

3. Spade (Chrome): Privately Annotate and Highlight Web Pages

Spade is an excellent free tool to aid your research for essays and papers while keeping it private. It's a Chrome browser extension with annotation and highlighting abilities and a few other neat tricks like citations and machine-learning analysis.

Once you install the extension, Spade appears as a little button in one of the four corners of every web page (customizable by you). Click the button to expand a toolbar that has an annotation pen to draw or scribble anywhere and a highlight marker. You can control the point size for each and choose from seven different colors. Spade also lets you form a text box anywhere on the page to write notes and has a simple eraser to take it all away. All these highlights are shared and synced to your Spade web account so that you can access them anywhere.

In our tests, sharing a page made in Spade didn't show the annotations or highlights to the recipient. Nonetheless, you can export any annotated page as a PDF file with all notes intact.

Apart from these annotation features, Spade includes a built-in citation tool for research papers that automatically cites pages in leading journals. It also uses machine learning to rate a web page's credibility and summarizes large text into precis.

Download: Spade for Chrome (Free)

4. Hypothes.is (Web, Chrome): Collaborative Annotations and Highlights on the Web

If you're working with a study group or a team on a research project that needs to share links with annotations, Hypothesis is as good as it gets. This Chrome extension is much lighter than others and focuses on the ability to collaborate. Plus, it's ad-free and has no hidden costs or restrictions.

All users will need to sign up for a Hypothesis account before installing the extension. Then, create a private group if you wish to keep your shares confidential with your friends, or use the default Public tab let anyone see the annotations.

On any web page, you can select text to turn it into a highlight or an annotation (i.e., highlight with a note). Each of these shows up in your Hypothesis sidebar in chronological order for that page. Collaborators can add comments and reply to each annotation individually. You can also add a note on any page which appears in the Notes section.

The Hypothesis web dashboard makes it easy to search through all your highlights and notes. Along with a full-text search, you can add advanced operators (like username, group name, URL, or tag) to find what you're looking for quickly.

Download: Hypothesis for Chrome (Free)

5. LINER (Browsers, Mobile): Best Cross-Platform Highlight Tool, Also for YouTube

Liner is one of the best online annotation apps and has been for years, especially with its recent updates. Its broad support for different platforms makes it the go-to choice if you're switching between phones, tablets, and computers but need one place to collect all your highlights.

Once you create an account and log in, you can select any text to highlight it. You can also add a comment to any highlight and share this with friends and collaborators. The free basic account only lets you work with one color for the highlighter and limits you to 15 highlights per page. For more colors and unlimited highlights, you need the Premium package.

Liner also works with YouTube, which makes it stand apart. You can highlight any part of a YouTube video, much like highlighting text on a web page. This worked well for us on browsers but not on mobiles.

The app has a few other features worth checking out, like how it shows the most popular highlights by other users on any page. And the dashboard can distinguish between text and video highlights.

Download: Liner for Android | iOS (Free)

Download: Liner for Chrome | Edge | Safari | Whale (Free)

Use Colors as Your Own Organizing System

Whichever annotation tool you use, there's a nifty hack suggested by multiple users and app blogs. Since most of them let you use different colors for highlighting or annotation, use these colors for your own tagging or organizing system.

For example, when you highlight text in yellow, it means "worth reading," but when you highlight it in red, it means "use as-is in the research paper." Do that for all the colors. No one other than you needs to know what each color signifies, but as long as you are consistent with how you use them, it'll give you a useful system.

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How Spammers, Scammers and Creators Leverage AI-Generated Images on Facebook for Audience Growth

  • Renee DiResta ,
  • Josh A. Goldstein

Text-to-image models such as DALL-E and Midjourney can produce impressive, at times even photorealistic, images. Past research by the Stanford Internet Observatory  has covered the very serious implications for child safety and nonconsensual intimate imagery. Researchers and policymakers have  expressed fears that they could be misused to inject false information into political discourse. 

In a new preprint paper , we discuss something else entirely: spam and scams. Behold, Shrimp Jesus.  

image of Jesus under water, his arms and torso made of shrimps

The magnificent surrealism of Shrimp Jesus—or, relatedly, Crab Jesus, Watermelon Jesus, Fanta Jesus, and Spaghetti Jesus—is captivating. What  is that? Why does that exist? You perhaps feel motivated to share it with your friends, so that they can share in your WTF moment. (We encourage you to share this post, of course.) 

But that capacity to produce captivating, novel, and immersive imagery, cheaply and instantly, and to immediately double down on wins that generate significant engagement, is also what makes the technology appealing to spammers and scammers. These innovative actors, seemingly motivated primarily by profit or clout (not ideology) have been using AI-generated images to gain viral traction on Facebook since AI image-generation tools became readily available. And Facebook, it appears, is actively recommending their content by pushing it into users’ Feeds. In 2016, the “fake news” stories  produced by Macedonian teenagers and designed for Facebook’s algorithms  pulled in tens of millions of page views; AI artisans tempt Facebook’s Feed ranking algorithms today. 

To understand how the technology is being used for page growth and incorporated into spam and scams, we examined more than 100 Facebook Pages that each posted 50+ AI-generated images. Some form coordinated clusters, which post large numbers of AI-generated images. Apparent motivations include driving people to off-platform websites, selling products, and building bigger followings. We focused on the spammers, which we defined as accounts that were pushing their audiences out to a content farm, and scammers, who were attempting either to sell products that do not appear to exist, had stolen the pages they operated, or were attempting to manipulate their audiences within the comments. These images in total account for hundreds of millions of interactions and are shown through Facebook’s Feed to some Facebook users who do not follow the Pages. While Shrimp Jesus is (perhaps) obviously an artistic fantasy—created by a page that previously shared clickbait links to a content farm—comments on many of the AI-generated images of more mundane things, like housewares, homes, or artwork purportedly created by children, suggest many users are unaware of the synthetic origin, although a subset of users post comments or infographics attempting to warn other users. Our research highlights routine but non-transparent uses of AI-generated images on Facebook and the need for better provenance and transparency methods.

In the words of the copypasta captions: thanks to everyone who appreciates this. 

Key takeaways:

  • We studied 120 Facebook Pages that posted at least 50 AI-generated images each, classifying the Pages into spam, scam, and ‘other creator’ categories. Some were coordinated clusters of Pages run by the same administrators. 
  • These images collectively received hundreds of millions of engagements. A post including an AI-generated image was one of the 20 most viewed pieces of content on Facebook in Q3 2023 (with 40 million views). 
  • Spam Pages used clickbait tactics and attempted to direct users to off-platform content farms and low-quality domains. Scam Pages attempted to sell products that do not exist or to get users to divulge personal details; some were posting the AI-generated images on stolen Pages.
  • AI-generated images are shown on the Facebook Feed to users who do not follow the Pages. We suspect that AI-generated images appear on users’ Feeds because the Facebook Feed ranking algorithm promotes content that is likely to generate engagement. Comments on the AI-generated images suggest many users are unaware of the synthetic origin of the images, though a subset of users post comments or infographics alerting others. The fact that viewers are deceived by these images highlights the importance of labeling and additional transparency measures moving forward.
  • Some of the Facebook Pages we studied also used known deceptive practices, such as account theft or takeover, and exhibited suspicious follower growth.
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  • Research paper

Writing a Research Paper Introduction | Step-by-Step Guide

Published on September 24, 2022 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on March 27, 2023.

Writing a Research Paper Introduction

The introduction to a research paper is where you set up your topic and approach for the reader. It has several key goals:

  • Present your topic and get the reader interested
  • Provide background or summarize existing research
  • Position your own approach
  • Detail your specific research problem and problem statement
  • Give an overview of the paper’s structure

The introduction looks slightly different depending on whether your paper presents the results of original empirical research or constructs an argument by engaging with a variety of sources.

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Table of contents

Step 1: introduce your topic, step 2: describe the background, step 3: establish your research problem, step 4: specify your objective(s), step 5: map out your paper, research paper introduction examples, frequently asked questions about the research paper introduction.

The first job of the introduction is to tell the reader what your topic is and why it’s interesting or important. This is generally accomplished with a strong opening hook.

The hook is a striking opening sentence that clearly conveys the relevance of your topic. Think of an interesting fact or statistic, a strong statement, a question, or a brief anecdote that will get the reader wondering about your topic.

For example, the following could be an effective hook for an argumentative paper about the environmental impact of cattle farming:

A more empirical paper investigating the relationship of Instagram use with body image issues in adolescent girls might use the following hook:

Don’t feel that your hook necessarily has to be deeply impressive or creative. Clarity and relevance are still more important than catchiness. The key thing is to guide the reader into your topic and situate your ideas.

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This part of the introduction differs depending on what approach your paper is taking.

In a more argumentative paper, you’ll explore some general background here. In a more empirical paper, this is the place to review previous research and establish how yours fits in.

Argumentative paper: Background information

After you’ve caught your reader’s attention, specify a bit more, providing context and narrowing down your topic.

Provide only the most relevant background information. The introduction isn’t the place to get too in-depth; if more background is essential to your paper, it can appear in the body .

Empirical paper: Describing previous research

For a paper describing original research, you’ll instead provide an overview of the most relevant research that has already been conducted. This is a sort of miniature literature review —a sketch of the current state of research into your topic, boiled down to a few sentences.

This should be informed by genuine engagement with the literature. Your search can be less extensive than in a full literature review, but a clear sense of the relevant research is crucial to inform your own work.

Begin by establishing the kinds of research that have been done, and end with limitations or gaps in the research that you intend to respond to.

The next step is to clarify how your own research fits in and what problem it addresses.

Argumentative paper: Emphasize importance

In an argumentative research paper, you can simply state the problem you intend to discuss, and what is original or important about your argument.

Empirical paper: Relate to the literature

In an empirical research paper, try to lead into the problem on the basis of your discussion of the literature. Think in terms of these questions:

  • What research gap is your work intended to fill?
  • What limitations in previous work does it address?
  • What contribution to knowledge does it make?

You can make the connection between your problem and the existing research using phrases like the following.

Now you’ll get into the specifics of what you intend to find out or express in your research paper.

The way you frame your research objectives varies. An argumentative paper presents a thesis statement, while an empirical paper generally poses a research question (sometimes with a hypothesis as to the answer).

Argumentative paper: Thesis statement

The thesis statement expresses the position that the rest of the paper will present evidence and arguments for. It can be presented in one or two sentences, and should state your position clearly and directly, without providing specific arguments for it at this point.

Empirical paper: Research question and hypothesis

The research question is the question you want to answer in an empirical research paper.

Present your research question clearly and directly, with a minimum of discussion at this point. The rest of the paper will be taken up with discussing and investigating this question; here you just need to express it.

A research question can be framed either directly or indirectly.

  • This study set out to answer the following question: What effects does daily use of Instagram have on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls?
  • We investigated the effects of daily Instagram use on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls.

If your research involved testing hypotheses , these should be stated along with your research question. They are usually presented in the past tense, since the hypothesis will already have been tested by the time you are writing up your paper.

For example, the following hypothesis might respond to the research question above:

The final part of the introduction is often dedicated to a brief overview of the rest of the paper.

In a paper structured using the standard scientific “introduction, methods, results, discussion” format, this isn’t always necessary. But if your paper is structured in a less predictable way, it’s important to describe the shape of it for the reader.

If included, the overview should be concise, direct, and written in the present tense.

  • This paper will first discuss several examples of survey-based research into adolescent social media use, then will go on to …
  • This paper first discusses several examples of survey-based research into adolescent social media use, then goes on to …

Full examples of research paper introductions are shown in the tabs below: one for an argumentative paper, the other for an empirical paper.

  • Argumentative paper
  • Empirical paper

Are cows responsible for climate change? A recent study (RIVM, 2019) shows that cattle farmers account for two thirds of agricultural nitrogen emissions in the Netherlands. These emissions result from nitrogen in manure, which can degrade into ammonia and enter the atmosphere. The study’s calculations show that agriculture is the main source of nitrogen pollution, accounting for 46% of the country’s total emissions. By comparison, road traffic and households are responsible for 6.1% each, the industrial sector for 1%. While efforts are being made to mitigate these emissions, policymakers are reluctant to reckon with the scale of the problem. The approach presented here is a radical one, but commensurate with the issue. This paper argues that the Dutch government must stimulate and subsidize livestock farmers, especially cattle farmers, to transition to sustainable vegetable farming. It first establishes the inadequacy of current mitigation measures, then discusses the various advantages of the results proposed, and finally addresses potential objections to the plan on economic grounds.

The rise of social media has been accompanied by a sharp increase in the prevalence of body image issues among women and girls. This correlation has received significant academic attention: Various empirical studies have been conducted into Facebook usage among adolescent girls (Tiggermann & Slater, 2013; Meier & Gray, 2014). These studies have consistently found that the visual and interactive aspects of the platform have the greatest influence on body image issues. Despite this, highly visual social media (HVSM) such as Instagram have yet to be robustly researched. This paper sets out to address this research gap. We investigated the effects of daily Instagram use on the prevalence of body image issues among adolescent girls. It was hypothesized that daily Instagram use would be associated with an increase in body image concerns and a decrease in self-esteem ratings.

The introduction of a research paper includes several key elements:

  • A hook to catch the reader’s interest
  • Relevant background on the topic
  • Details of your research problem

and your problem statement

  • A thesis statement or research question
  • Sometimes an overview of the paper

Don’t feel that you have to write the introduction first. The introduction is often one of the last parts of the research paper you’ll write, along with the conclusion.

This is because it can be easier to introduce your paper once you’ve already written the body ; you may not have the clearest idea of your arguments until you’ve written them, and things can change during the writing process .

The way you present your research problem in your introduction varies depending on the nature of your research paper . A research paper that presents a sustained argument will usually encapsulate this argument in a thesis statement .

A research paper designed to present the results of empirical research tends to present a research question that it seeks to answer. It may also include a hypothesis —a prediction that will be confirmed or disproved by your research.

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Caulfield, J. (2023, March 27). Writing a Research Paper Introduction | Step-by-Step Guide. Scribbr. Retrieved March 21, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/research-paper/research-paper-introduction/

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COMMENTS

  1. How to Cite a Website

    Citing a website in MLA Style. An MLA Works Cited entry for a webpage lists the author's name, the title of the page (in quotation marks), the name of the site (in italics), the date of publication, and the URL. The in-text citation usually just lists the author's name. For a long page, you may specify a (shortened) section heading to ...

  2. How to Cite a Website in APA Style

    Revised on January 17, 2024. APA website citations usually include the author, the publication date, the title of the page or article, the website name, and the URL. If there is no author, start the citation with the title of the article. If the page is likely to change over time, add a retrieval date. If you are citing an online version of a ...

  3. Webpage on a Website References

    Provide the name of the news website in the source element of the reference. Link to the comment itself if possible. Otherwise, link to the webpage on which the comment appears. Either a full URL or a short URL is acceptable. 3. Webpage on a website with a government agency group author.

  4. How to Cite a Website in APA

    This guide explains all of the important steps to referencing a website/web page in your APA research papers. The guidance below follows APA style, 7th edition. APA format is much different than MLA format and other styles. If you need to cite websites in MLA, or you're looking for more styles, check out the other resources on EasyBib.com!

  5. MLA Works Cited: Electronic Sources (Web Publications)

    MLA (Modern Language Association) style is most commonly used to write papers and cite sources within the liberal arts and humanities. This resource, updated to reflect the MLA Handbook (9 th ed.), offers examples for the general format of MLA research papers, in-text citations, endnotes/footnotes, and the Works Cited page.

  6. A Literature Review: Website Design and User Engagement

    2.3. Analysis. The literature review uncovered 20 distinct design elements commonly discussed in research that affect user engagement. They were (1) organization - is the website logically organized, (2) content utility - is the information provided useful or interesting, (3) navigation - is the website easy to navigate, (4) graphical representation - does the website utilize icons ...

  7. How to Cite a Website in MLA

    Revised on March 5, 2024. An MLA website citation includes the author's name, the title of the page (in quotation marks), the name of the website (in italics), the publication date, and the URL (without "https://"). If the author is unknown, start with the title of the page instead. If the publication date is unknown, or if the content is ...

  8. Webpages

    Organization or website name. List the organization or website name after the webpage title in plain text. If the webpage does not have a specific author, use the organization name in place of the author at the start of the reference entry and leave it out in this place. URL. Give the URL for the specific page and not the organization's home ...

  9. The Design and Implementation of Responsive Web Page ...

    Nian, Bo Zhang in their paper [3] explains the importance of responsive web design to provide high-quality experience to the user by displaying web pages at varying resolutions, sizes of screen ...

  10. Web pages

    REFERENCE (ONE AUTHOR) (For more examples, see p. 350-352 of the 7th edition or visit the APA Style site) * Please note: If multiple webpages from a website are cited, create a reference for each. If mentioning a website in general, do not create a reference list entry or in-text citation. Instead, include the name of the website in text and ...

  11. PDF The Anatomy of a Search Engine

    The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine. Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page Computer Science Department, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA [email protected] and [email protected] Abstract In this paper, we present Google, a prototype of a large-scale search engine which makes heavy use of the structure present ...

  12. 4 Ways to Cite a Website

    3. Type the title of the web page in sentence case. Type a space after the period that follows the date, then type the title of the web page, which will usually appear as a header at the top of the page. Use sentence case, capitalizing only the first word and any proper nouns. Place a period at the end of the title.

  13. 10 Best Online Websites and Resources for Academic Research

    Still, Google Books is a great first step to find sources that you can later look for at your campus library. 6. Science.gov. If you're looking for scientific research, Science.gov is a great option. The site provides full-text documents, scientific data, and other resources from federally funded research.

  14. Search

    With 160+ million publication pages, 25+ million researchers and 1+ million questions, this is where everyone can access science. You can use AND, OR, NOT, "" and () to specify your search ...

  15. The best academic search engines [Update 2024]

    1. Google Scholar. Google Scholar is the clear number one when it comes to academic search engines. It's the power of Google searches applied to research papers and patents. It not only lets you find research papers for all academic disciplines for free but also often provides links to full-text PDF files. Coverage: approx. 200 million articles.

  16. Research Paper Format

    Formatting an APA paper. The main guidelines for formatting a paper in APA Style are as follows: Use a standard font like 12 pt Times New Roman or 11 pt Arial. Set 1 inch page margins. Apply double line spacing. If submitting for publication, insert a APA running head on every page. Indent every new paragraph ½ inch.

  17. ResearchGate

    Access 160+ million publications and connect with 25+ million researchers. Join for free and gain visibility by uploading your research.

  18. PDF Formatting a Research Paper

    Do not use a period after your title or after any heading in the paper (e.g., Works Cited). Begin your text on a new, double-spaced line after the title, indenting the first line of the paragraph half an inch from the left margin. Fig. 1. The top of the first page of a research paper.

  19. APA Formatting and Style Guide (7th Edition)

    Basic guidelines for formatting the reference list at the end of a standard APA research paper Author/Authors Rules for handling works by a single author or multiple authors that apply to all APA-style references in your reference list, regardless of the type of work (book, article, electronic resource, etc.) ...

  20. 5 Best Tools to Annotate and Highlight Web Pages for Research and ...

    3. Spade (Chrome): Privately Annotate and Highlight Web Pages. Spade is an excellent free tool to aid your research for essays and papers while keeping it private. It's a Chrome browser extension with annotation and highlighting abilities and a few other neat tricks like citations and machine-learning analysis.

  21. How to Write a Research Paper

    Choose a research paper topic. Conduct preliminary research. Develop a thesis statement. Create a research paper outline. Write a first draft of the research paper. Write the introduction. Write a compelling body of text. Write the conclusion. The second draft.

  22. Connected Papers

    Get a visual overview of a new academic field. Enter a typical paper and we'll build you a graph of similar papers in the field. Explore and build more graphs for interesting papers that you find - soon you'll have a real, visual understanding of the trends, popular works and dynamics of the field you're interested in.

  23. How Spammers, Scammers and Creators Leverage AI-Generated Images on

    Text-to-image models such as DALL-E and Midjourney can produce impressive, at times even photorealistic, images. Past research by the Stanford Internet Observatory has covered the very serious implications for child safety and nonconsensual intimate imagery. Researchers and policymakers have expressed fears that they could be misused to inject false information into political discourse.

  24. Writing a Research Paper Introduction

    Table of contents. Step 1: Introduce your topic. Step 2: Describe the background. Step 3: Establish your research problem. Step 4: Specify your objective (s) Step 5: Map out your paper. Research paper introduction examples. Frequently asked questions about the research paper introduction.