"APA is for academic papers I believe."
Purdue OWL: APA Formatting and Style Guide
The format has become popular in research, because it is well thought out, but really any format that clearly shows the hypothesis, the methodology, the data, the conclusion and references is what I am looking for. I am not looking for some lawyer to tell me that experiments have been done.
One of the most important things when doing research is finding credible sources, and if you are going on the web then generally something from an .edu site. There are so many bad sources out there, that if you don't learn how to filter them out you could spend a life time learning BS.
I gave it a chapter read, and that is well enough for me.