How to Cite the Marxists Internet Archive
How to cite text sourced on the Marxists Internet Archive is something determined by the standards specified by your Editor. Examples of standards are:
American Psychological Association
Harvard UniversityThese documents will tell you how to set out the information.
Generally speaking you should find full bibliographical information about the source MIA used at the top of the file, or if it is a multi-file document, at the top of index file. You can then cite the URL and include the author, title of work, and publisher details of our source. That ought to be complete, except that you will have to use Google to find further details about the publisher. Obviously web pages do not have page numbers, only URLs.
We ask that you include the URL and the words “Marxists Internet Archive.”
In the case of some writers (e.g., Marx and Engels, Lenin) we have reproduced the tables of contents for the Collected Works, and this may be of assistance in locating an authoritative source.
Harvard style allows you to reference a URL directly in the text, rather than listing it in the table of references. In this case, the URL should be enclosed in angular brackets, e.g.
“Hitherto philosophers have only interpreted the world”
<http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/index.htm>It is important to cite the data of publication of the actual source, so in this case, it will be the date on which the web page is accessed, but it is usually acceptable to place in square brackets, the year the original work (not the translation) was written (not published), so for example
Marx, K. [1845], Theses on Feuerbach, <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/index.htm>, accessed May 2011.
Or by checking the page numbers on MECW which began publication in 1975:
Marx, K. (1975/[1845]), “Theses on Feuerbach,” Marx Engels Collected Works, Volume 5, p. 3, New York, NY: International Publishers.
If you are unhappy with disclosing the fact that, like everyone else, you are doing research on the internet and not in a library, and can only cite a URL and not page numbers, then you have to accept that the final stage of preparing your paper for publication is visiting a library and tracking down original sources.
In the case of editorial material or text from the Marxists Internet Archive Encyclopedia of Marxism, then you will need to cite the URL, the date accessed and credit “Marxists Internet Archive.”
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