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Websites

In general, the use of websites as references is frowned upon. Scientific or scholarly publications have been through a stringent process of peer review, fact checking, and editing.  That is why they are considered reliable sources of information. Websites, on the other hand, span a range from reliable to purposefully misleading and do not have to meet any standards. For this reason websites sill not be accepted as references in your lab report. You should find the original source discussed on the website and use that as your reference.

Exceptions

Often, you will find you can access articles from journals online.  Those are not websites, but actual journal articles so you need to reference them as journal articles.  If you have a pdf, you can usually find the reference information on the first page, or on the “Find It” page you may have used to reach it.  The journal name, year, and volume are typically listed in the header or footer for the article.  The other major exception is journals that are strictly online.  The main examples of this are journals associated with the Public Library of Science (PLoS).  These journals are peer-reviewed, but have open access so that anyone can view them.  The only difference between the citation of PLoS articles and standard articles is the page number: PLoS articles do not have page numbers, but instead have article numbers.

Haag-Liautard, C., Coffey, N., Houle, D., Lynch, M., Charlesworth, B., and Keightley, P.D. 2008. Direct estimation of the mitochondrial DNA mutation rate in Drosophila melanogaster. PLoS Biology. 6(8): e204.