Citing and referencing: Websites

Citation Elements

The following are suggested examples based on information available from the IEEE Citation Guidelines. Please contact the appropriate academic staff member to clarify any referencing issues you may have.

First name or intials. Surname. (year, month day). Title (edition) [Type of medium]. Available: site/path/file

Examples

Blog

See the various citation elements shown below in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1. Citation elements of a blog

Web document authored by personal author and a professional organisation

Web document authored by a professional organisation

The following example does not have an edition statement.  Where no author is given, the organisation responsible for the website where the document was housed  can be listed instead ie IEEE.  In this case the publication lists the contact details for queries regarding the publication as IEEE Corporate Communications.

Professional website where the date of publication is not immediately apparent

Note: the reference above has the date sourced from "last modified date" which is shown at bottom  of the web page.  See Fig. 2.

Fig 2.  Citation elements of a web page: Ahmet's FAQs

In this case, it is not clear who the author is.  Since the page is about Professor Armstrong's research and contains her biography, it is likely to be authored by Professor Armstrong.  The website contains the Department of Electrical Computer Systems Engineering  in the URL, so if in doubt, the organisation that hosts the page is treated as the author.  Again the date of publication is taken from the most recent "last updated date" in the footer - see Fig. 3.  If there was no date, one would use the copyright date as the date of publication.

Fig 3.  Clues relating to date of publication, shown in the footer of the website.

The screenshot below shows the various elements required for the reference, including the upload date for the date of publication.  If the youtube clip provides credits then these details can be used instead.