Walden University Writing Center

Where instructors and editors talk writing.

When new students (either undergraduate or graduate) begin their academic work at Walden, the one thing they I always hear about is APA. Some students are already familiar with APA, while it’s completely new to some. If so compelled to search on Google or within some of Walden’s own websites, APA is revealed to be a “set of rules” one must usually apply to academic papers to ensure they are written “properly” within the guidelines of all of Walden’s coursework. Beyond this brief introduction, there are also tales (horrific tales?) that APA contains hundreds of rules about formatting, headings, citations, and other strange rules that every student – especially you! – must commit to memory if you’re to succeed in your coursework. APA, you may have also heard, is impossible to learn, containing so many rules no one person can ever know it all.

While a small portion of it is true – Walden students do need to be familiar with APA – the horror stories of having to commit all of it to memory couldn’t be further from the truth. The happy ending to this story - the big reveal before the curtain goes down – is that everything you need to know about APA is located on the Writing Center website. 
 
Now, it is true that APA gets easier the more you apply it to Walden coursework, committing the rules of APA to your memory is a naturally occurring process that occurs gradually over time. There is no APA-Olympics that will ever require you to take a timed “APA test” on which you will write down every APA rule under penalty of being removed from Walden. If this is an academic nightmare you’ve ever had, it is finally time to wake up. Your teachers at Walden absolutely understand how and why APA may be new to many of you, and the inherent challenges associated with applying (and thinking in) this new style of writing. 
 

 
So, before you forget you ever read this blog post, here’s one final thought. Yes, APA will be a part of your academic writing while at Walden, and it contain rules you’ll need to learn over time. The good news is you never need to worry about learning all the rules or having them crammed in your brain all at once. The Walden Writing Center website is designed to be your “APA brain away from home.” We wrote all the rules down for you so they’re there when you need them.  

When applying APA to writing Walden papers there are a few basic rules one needs to remember: the basic template of APA papers, how to use headings, and how to use citations, all of which are clearly revealed on our website. Bookmark our site (https://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/home) and commit its URL to memory.  

And –if you can’t do that—try a Post-It for your wall!

With many changes in APA 7 focusing on the move to digital accessibility, it is important to understand the issues proxy servers can present readers and researchers. This will often require students to make modifications to DOIs retrieved from some databases, including the Walden Library databases, to ensure they are accessible to all readers.  Please read below for further explanations and action items for how you can ensure the DOI numbers you include in your reference list are accessible to all readers. 

A proxy server is an application that acts as a middleman between those seeking resources and those providing resources. Walden students (the seekers) are likely to see this in the databases of the Walden Library (the provider), which houses all journal articles and research that Laureate holds fair use licenses.  

When including the proxy server (i.e., https://eds-b-ebscohost-com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/doi.org/10XXXX) in the DOI provided to the reader, the writer only makes this research accessible to those with a specific login to this system. In this case, a Walden login would allow Walden students access to this research through the Walden Library databases. Instead, writers should remove this proxy server to provide the non-specific DOI (in URL form as per APA 7 guidelines) that will allow all readers, including non-Walden students, to access this specific research.   

To provide the most accessible link for your reader regarding a DOI URL, eliminate “ezp.waldenlibrary.org” from the URL. It should read simply as follows: https://doi.org/10.XXXXX  

Here is an example:  

Inaccessible: https://eds-b-ebscohost-com.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/ doi.org/10.1080/20479700.2017.1412558 

Accessible: https://doi.org/10.1080/20479700.2017.1412558 

As you can see from the above example, the first link will bring the reader to a login page before allowing them to access these materials. If the reader does not have an active Walden login, they will not be able to access these materials. However, once the proxy server is removed and only the active DOI hyperlink is included, this research becomes accessible to anyone with an internet connection.  

Removing the proxy information from a DOI is an important step to provide accessibility to all readers of our research, and it also aids in future accessibility as the non-proxy DOI numbers and URLs will always be accessible, even when removed from, or moved to, different internal servers. 

With this rule in mind it is also important to note the recent APA 7 change that requires all DOIs to be presented in an active URL form. This may mean altering the DOI URLs you have from the Walden Library databases to follow the URL format, along with removing the proxy server information.  

If you ever are unsure if you are omitting the correct information you can also check your sources on www.crossref.org/guestquery to see and verify the correct DOI URL, without any proxy server attached. You can also learn more about formatting DOI URLs on our website and through the examples on our Common Reference List Examples page.