Referencing Styles for Citing Scientific Databases: AStudy on APA, MLA, and Chicago/Turabian Formats

To cite online documents, using databases and following standardreferencing styles have become a disciplinary need of scholars. Injournal articles, theses, and dissertations especially, it has become acommon practice to cite databases. This study examined how threemajor referencing styles handle the citation of electronic documentsobtained from databases, focusing on the citation elements such asthe database name, URL, the descriptive phrase or record locator, etc.The study found that the APA, MLA, Chicago & Turabian formatshave been developed with less effort and concern about databaserelated citation guidelines than database providers have done. Databaseproviders have dominated the circulation of research literatures inthe market and gradually gained control over the right of annotationfor citation format to some extent. To sustain the authority of thestandard referencing styles, the original institutions responsible for thecitation formats should amend their rules for citing scholarly electronicdatabases in a clear and timely manner.