IMPORTANT NOTICE: The Modern Language Association updated their guidelines on April 1, 2016. We have not yet updated this section of Resources for Researchers to reflect these changes. We have ordered a copy of the new guidelines and will update as soon as possible.
Why have a separate format for electronic databases?
Some students might ask why they have to use a different format for an article they retrieved from an electronic database than for the same article found in the periodical itself. Aren't the articles the same? Generally, they are. But sometimes errors are made when articles are transferred to the database. These errors can make it so that the "same" article is not really identical in the two formats.
For example, when I retrieved Leslie W. Hepple's "South American Heartland," I noticed that there was an error in the first sentence of the abstract published by Academic Search Premier.
- Academic Search Premier Version
""˜geographical pivot of history' concept, subsequently developed into his famous"˜Eurasian heartland thesis', marginalizes South America, yet his ideas..."
Correct Version With Correction Highlighted
"Mackinder's 1904 'geographical pivot of history' concept, subsequently developed into his famous"˜Eurasian heartland thesis', marginalizes South America, yet his ideas..."
Dropping "Mackinder's 1904" from the beginning of the sentence did not pose a serious error because a PDF file of the original article was included in the database. But, PDF files are not always available.
