I have been trying to get the Endnote APA 5th style to give the option of an access date. My APA pocket guide indicates that an access date is required, but all I can get in the electronic article option is a “Retrieved from” - Had a look at editing the style & tried copying the bits from one of the other formats (conference paper) on which the access date option worked fine - but that only resulted in the words"access date" appearing in the citation instead of the actual date. I downloaded & tried the amended APA style from UQ’s impressive Endnote help page - but their style also didn’t provide me with the option. Does anyone have any tips - or know any sites of amended APA 5th style - that does provide the access date option? I am a style editing beginner - basically so far I have just copied and pasted stuff.
Replying to my own question! If at first you don’t succeed…
Going back into editing styles again, I realised that if using copy and paste, it is important not to paste apples on oranges…
- the conference paper reference type that I had copied from had used the field name Access Date - but the electronic article reference type has named the same field Date Accessed - as soon as I replaced Access Date with Date Accessed in the edited style the correct date appeared in the citation. Yippee! Sorry to waste the forum space - but who knows? - this may assist someone else.
The APA published a new Style Guide to Electronic References in 2007, which updates the relevant section of the 5th edition of the Publication Manual.
On page 2 it states: “For undated or otherwise changeable content retrieved from the open Web, as well as in-preparation, in-press, or preprint journal articles, include the retrieval date. No retrieval date is necessary for content that is not likely to be changed or updated, such as a journal article or book.”