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What is APA?
The American Psychological Association came up with a standardized format for professional publication in the social sciences. Many in the hard sciences also use APA format out of convenience. There does exist an ACS format from the American Chemical Society, but that is mainly applicable to cutting-edge chemistry and physics research and is a bit beyond the scope of anything you will likely do until you start working on your PhD in chemistry.
APA format is very picky, and everything must be done exactly as expected or it is wrong. Luckily for us, many of the rules are common sense, and those that aren't will not apply to our work. The rules cover the formatting of a research paper, citation of sources, and the handling of graphs, tables, and attachments.
Format of the Paper
Overall Format
The paper should be double spaced with one-inch margins on all sides. Font should be Courier or Courier New. This is a monospaced font, which means that all letters take up exactly the same space, as opposed to proportional fonts like Times New Roman where different letters take up different amounts of space. Editors like monospaced fonts because they can quickly gauge how many pages the article will take in their publications. Finally, each page (including the title page) should have a header in the upper-right corner. The header should include a shortened version of the title and the page number -- no word "page" or anything, just the number.
Writing syntax is very stilted and passive. You wouldn't say, "I expected to find..." Rather, you would say, "It is expected that..." It takes some time to get used to the style, especially if you are used to the more creative writing style used in English classes. Reading a few journal articles during your research will give you a good idea of the style used and what goes in each section.
Title Page
The title page should contain a suitably pretentious title centered left-to-right and roughly one third of the way down the page. Immediately below that should be the author's full name, and below that, his school affiliation. The whole thing should be double-spaced, by the way, just like the rest of the paper. Roughly two thirds of the way down you should place the submission date, written out like "February 3, 2009," not 2/3/09.
Abstract
The abstract is a brief summary of the research. It should be no more than a single paragraph in length. Don't include specific details; that's what the actual paper is for. The abstract should begin with a statement of the purpose of the paper -- what you're trying to accomplish. This can be a laboratory objective, like trying to extract and measure the quantity of vitamin C in a brand of orange juice, or a research objective, like trying to show that a particular class of antibiotics kill bacteria by inhibiting the activity of membrane surface receptor proteins. Follow that up with a brief description of methodology. In a lab-based paper, you'd mention the laboratory techniques you used. In pure research, you would talk about the nature of the sources you used. Finally, you should summarize your results. Lab results should be stated clearly and explicitly, just like in a chemistry lab report. Research results will be fairly straightforward, just state the overall conclusion you came to after completing your research.
Introduction
The main point of the introduction is to present something called a "Literature Review." Here is where you present a recap of what the scientific literature says about the topic at hand. You'll discuss the ideas, theories, and experiments in great detail, saying who did what, what their thoughts on the subject were, and what the consensus of the scientific community is. Be sure to include opposing viewpoints if relevant; don't just cite articles that favor your preferred theory. The idea is to provide an overview of the current state of knowledge on the subject. Virtually everything you say here should be cited to a specific source or sources. Perhaps the very opening can be a brief introduction to your objectives and reasoning, and the very end can be a short summary of your conclusions and opinions, but otherwise there is no room for your opinion in the introduction section.
If you are doing a pure research paper, the entire thing is in essence a Literature Review.
Methodology
Here is where you summarize what you did. You don't need explicit detail of common laboratory techniques; just saying, "The vitamin C concentration was found by iodimetric titration," is fine. Make sure you specify reagents used and their concentrations where appropriate. Also state the specific instruments used if necessary. The methodology section doesn't need to be very long, but it should be complete enough that someone who reads your paper could reproduce the experiment.
Results
In this section you should clearly show your results. Often, this means a bunch of charts, tables, graphs, and the like. These should be added as attachments at the end of the paper and referenced in the results section. "The absorbance values for the protein dilution series was measured at 253 nm wavelength (see Table 1) and a calibration curve was constructed from the data (see Graph 1)." Also, you need to clearly show how numeric results were calculated. "Concentrations were calculated using the Beer-Lambert Law, A = abc." Don't forget to include relative error and/or standard deviations from the mean where appropriate. The specifics of this section will vary considerably depending on the nature of your research. Some experiments require lots of math, others virtually none.
Discussion
Here is where you finally get to express an opinion. What do your results mean? Were they consistent with expectations? Did you accomplish what you wanted to do? Why or why not? You should discuss your results in detail, focusing on theoretical considerations. Cite relevant theoretical values and compare them with your experimental results. Discuss the experimental procedure itself; were there any methodological or systemic errors? Discuss how they might be avoided in future experiments. Be thorough in your analysis of the results and the experimental procedure. This is the section where you show me that you can take what you read about and produce your own unique thoughts and opinions.
References
The references page should start with the title "References" centered at the top of the page. Every source referenced in the paper should be listed in alphabetical order. If you didn't use it in the paper, don't list it here. In other words, the reference list and the sources used in the paper should be exactly the same.
Citing Sources
In-Text Citations
With a single author, you should cite like this:
...blah blah blah (Smith, 2008).
Smith (2008) said blah blah blah.
If there are two authors, it looks like this:
...blah blah blah (Smith & Jones, 2008).
Smith and Jones (2008) said blah blah blah.
If you have from three to six authors, list them all the first time you cite them, then use (Smith, et al., 2008) for all reverences after the first. For sources with more than six authors, use "et al." for all citations, even the first.
If you are citing a source with no stated author, you can cite like this:
The National Institutes of Health's Report on Biological Weapons (2008) says blah blah blah.
...blah blah blah (National Institutes of Health's Report on Biological Weapons, 2008).
In those rare cases where you directly quote a source, put the page number along with the citation.
"Blah blah blah" (Smith, et al., 2008, p. 32).
Reference Page
Sources on the reference page are listed alphabetically. Each entry starts at the left margin; if the source continues onto a second line, each line after the first is indented five spaces.
Journal article:
Smith, D. & Jones, A. S. (2008). The effects of biochemistry on the psychological well being of high-school students. Journal of Trivial Knowledge, 18, 248-251.
Smith, D. & Jones, A. S. (2008). The effects of biochemistry on the psychological well being of high-school students. Journal of Trivial Knowledge, 18(2), 32-37.
The first entry shows a journal that numbers its pages sequentially throughout the year's volume. In other words, if the January issue ends at page 126, the February issue will begin with page 127. The next year will start a new volume (volume 19 in the example above) beginning with page 1. The second entry shows a journal that is numbered from page 1 with each new edition. Thus, we specify volume 18, issue 2, and page numbers 32-37.
For a journal article accessed on line, you'd tack onto the end of the citation the following. note that the final period is left off the end of the sentence so that it is not mistaken as part of the url. A web site is referenced in a very similar way, but there won't be a journal name, volume, or page number to deal with.
Retrieved December 18, 2008, from http://www.worthlessdata.com/biochemistry
Books are referenced as follows:
Smith, D. (2004). The great big book of everything. New York: Universal Publishing.
Smith, D. (2004). Why I love biochemistry. In A. S. Jones (Ed.), The joys of biochemistry (p. 173-206). New York: Universal Publishing.
The first entry is for a stand-alone book. The second entry shows a single chapter or article within a larger book.
That should cover most of the circumstances you'll run into. If you come up with a source that gives you troubles, mention it on the forum and I'll take a look. There are plenty of good APA citation style web sites out there. Take a look around the internet and see what you find.
