Add a reference from a web page

You will now try adding and editing a web page as a reference in Zotero.

Save the web page to Zotero

  1. Go to: https://www.un.org/en/our-work/uphold-international-law Links to an external site.
  2. Save the reference to Zotero (it will be saved as a Snapshot)
  3. Select the reference in My Library and check the information in the right hand pane to see what Zotero picked up. Don't change anything yet.

Preview the reference in APA 7th edition bibliography format

Select the reference in Zotero and drag-and-drop it to an empty Word document to preview it in bibliography style. It should look like this (with another date):

Nations, U. (n.d.). Uphold International Law. United Nations; United Nations. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://www.un.org/en/our-work/uphold-international-law Links to an external site.

If it doesn't look like this, perhaps you haven't set up APA as your preview reference style? Check the page "Preview reference" and do this first.

Fix the author

In the preview, the author is written as Nations, U. This is because Zotero has put "United" as a surname, and "Nations" as a first name. To make Zotero write United Nations as the author, you must put "United Nations" in the the surname field, and leave the first name field blank. When you have done this, the reference preview should look like this:

United Nations. (n.d.). Uphold International Law. United Nations; United Nations. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://www.un.org/en/our-work/uphold-international-law Links to an external site.

Remove unnecessary information

United Nations is written three times, because it is at the same time the author, the website title and the publisher. You only need to have this information once, as the author. Remove "United Nations" from the field "Website Title", and the field "Extra". Now the preview should look like this:

United Nations. (n.d.). Uphold International Law. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://www.un.org/en/our-work/uphold-international-law Links to an external site.

The reference is now correct. NB! In other cases the author and the web site name (and sometimes publisher) may be different, and then you need to include all, but you never need to write the same information twice.

What about the publication date?

The publication date within brackets is written as "n.d." = no date, since Zotero can't find a date on the webpage. Always check manually if you can find a publication date or a date when the information was last updated. Often it is written below the title, or at the bottom of the page.

If you don't have a publication date, you instead write when the information was retrieved. Zotero will add a retrieval date automatically before the URL when a publication date is missing.

Optional: Other web page examples

Add the following webpages and online newspaper articles to Zotero. Preview, and fix the information in the fields until it is correct. If you get stuck, the solution and what you should do is written just below.

Example 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/03/science/ocean-plastic-animals.html Links to an external site.

Imbler, S. (2022, April 3). In the Ocean, It’s Snowing Microplastics. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/03/science/ocean-plastic-animals.html Links to an external site.

  • Everything already looks ok!

Example 2: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-63011640 Links to an external site.

Gardner, F. (2022, October 9). Wildlife abandons “Europe’s Amazon” nature reserve. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-63011640 Links to an external site.

  • Manually add the author (Frank Gardner)

Example 3: https://www.ams.usda.gov/services/organic-certification/becoming-certified Links to an external site.

USDA. (n.d.). Becoming a Certified Operation. Agricultural Marketing Service. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://www.ams.usda.gov/services/organic-certification/becoming-certified Links to an external site.

  • Manually add the author organization (USDA)
  • Put the Website Title information in the correct field (Agriculgural Marketing Service)

Example 4: https://www.government.se/press-releases/2019/12/a-coherent-policy-for-the-climate/ Links to an external site. 

Ministry of Environment. (2019, December 17). A coherent policy for the climate. Government Offices of Sweden. https://www.government.se/press-releases/2019/12/a-coherent-policy-for-the-climate/ Links to an external site.

  • Translate the author organization (to Ministry of Environment)
  • Fix the author format (write the whole name in the surname field)
  • Add the Website Title (Government Offices of Sweden)
  • Remove the Website Type, it is not necessary (Text)
  • Remove the duplicate author information in the field "Extra".

If you are uncertain about what a webpage reference should include, check out our APA reference guide for web pages.