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What Is an Annotated Bibliography?

An annotated bibliography is a list of resources with citations related to a
particular topic or arranged thematically that include a brief descriptive or

evaluative summary. The annotated bibliography can be arranged chronologically
by date of publication or alphabetically by author, with citations to print and/or

digital materials, such as, books, newspaper articles, journal articles,
dissertations, government documents, pamphlets, web sites, etc., multimedia

sources like films and audio recordings, or documents and materials preserved in
archival collections. Nevertheless, this unit only discusses an annotated

bibliography of journal articles.
The purpose of the annotation is to inform the reader of the relevance,

accuracy, and quality of the source, and to state how this source will be used in
the paper or project.

How Is an Annotated Bibliography Structured?
When compiling an annotated bibliography, researchers should think about

the relevance and quality of the journal article on a topic. They have to consider
whether the information meets the requirements of the topic, and is reliable and

academically respected source. To ease the researchers to find a relevant journal,
they may commence having their research topic or research question(s).

In general, an annotated bibliography is made up of two parts: a citation and
an annotation.

1. Citation

When writing an annotated bibliography, the complete citation should always
come first before the annotation. The citation details are set out in the same style

as a reference list item. It should be noted that citations of the annotated
bibliography presented in this unit use the American Psychological Association

th
th
(APA, 6 edition) style. Here is the format of the APA 6 referencing style:
Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of
Periodical, volume number(issue number),
pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy

Here are the examples:
Harlow, H. F. (1983). Fundamentals for preparing psychology journal

articles. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 55, 893-
896.

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