How to Cite a Journal Article in Every Style

Throughout this guide we use one running example so you can compare styles directly — a two-author article with a DOI:

The anatomy of a journal reference

Every journal-article citation, in every style, is built from the same set of facts; the styles only differ in how they order and punctuate them. Those facts are: the author(s), the year of publication, the article title, the journal title, the volume and issue numbers, the page range, and the DOI (digital object identifier) if one exists. Once you have collected these eight pieces of information, citing the article in any style is just a matter of arranging them correctly.

It helps to understand what a couple of these mean. The volume is the year-long run of a journal; the issue is a single instalment within that volume. The DOI is a permanent web address for the article that never changes even if the journal moves its website, which is why modern styles prefer it to an ordinary URL. Gather these once, accurately, and you will never have to hunt for them again.

Where to find the details

All eight facts appear on the article's first page and in its database record. The author names and title are obvious; the journal title, volume, issue and pages usually sit in a header or footer on the first page (often as "Journal of Educational Psychology, 112(3), 401–415"). The DOI is printed on the first page or available from the database, and on the publisher's site it is the link beginning "https://doi.org/". The single most reliable shortcut is to use the database's own "Cite" or "Export" button — Google Scholar, your library catalogue and most journal sites will generate a citation in your chosen style, which you then check against the rules below.

APA 7

APA puts the year second, uses sentence case for the article title, italicises the journal name and volume, and ends with the DOI as a full link:

In-text: (Smith & Okafor, 2020), or for a quote (Smith & Okafor, 2020, p. 404). Full details in our APA guide.

MLA 9

MLA puts the article title in quotation marks, italicises the journal, and uses "vol." and "no." labels; a DOI or database is added as a second container:

In-text: (Smith and Okafor 404) — author and page, no comma. See our MLA guide.

Harvard

Harvard (Cite Them Right) keeps the author–date order, puts the article title in single quotation marks, and italicises the journal:

In-text: (Smith and Okafor, 2020, p. 404). See our Harvard guide.

Chicago

In Chicago's Notes–Bibliography system the article appears first as a footnote, then in the bibliography:

See our Chicago guide for the footnote-to-bibliography cycle.

Vancouver

Vancouver numbers the source, abbreviates the journal, and uses its dense year-volume-page punctuation:

In-text: a number — (1) or superscript¹. See our Vancouver guide.

IEEE

IEEE uses a bracketed number, initials-first authors, the article title in quotation marks and an abbreviated, italicised journal:

In-text: [1]. See our IEEE guide.

The same article, side by side

Seeing the differences in one place makes the logic of each style clearer:

Two big families emerge. The author–date and footnote styles (APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago) alphabetise their list, while the numbered styles (Vancouver, IEEE) order it by citation. And styles split on how they treat the article title — sentence case and no quotes for the sciences, quotation marks for the humanities. Spotting which family your required style belongs to tells you most of what you need.

DOIs and online access

Almost every journal article published this century has a DOI, and you should include it wherever one exists. In APA, Harvard and MLA it is given as a full link beginning "https://doi.org/"; in Vancouver and IEEE it is often appended after the page range. Because a DOI is permanent, you generally do not need an access date for an article you found through a DOI — the identifier guarantees the reader can find the same version. This is one reason the DOI is preferred over a plain URL: a journal's website address may change, but its DOIs do not.

Articles with no DOI, and preprints

Older articles and some smaller journals have no DOI. In that case, cite the article using the volume, issue and page range exactly as a print article — that information alone identifies it. For an online-only article without a DOI, some styles add the URL of the journal's homepage (APA) or the database. A preprint — a paper posted before peer review, on a server such as arXiv or medRxiv — should be cited as a preprint and flagged as such in your text, because it has not yet been through peer review and carries less authority than a published article. Treat preprints with appropriate caution and never present one as if it were a peer-reviewed finding.

Getting the in-text citation right

A reference-list entry is only half of a citation; the other half is the in-text marker that points to it, and this is where the styles diverge most sharply in everyday writing. The author–date styles put identifying information directly into your sentence: APA and Harvard give the author and year — (Smith & Okafor, 2020) — while MLA gives the author and a page number with no comma — (Smith and Okafor 404). A reader of these styles learns who and (for APA and Harvard) when at the moment of citation, which is why their reference lists are alphabetical: the in-text cue is a name to look up.

The numbered styles work the opposite way. Vancouver and IEEE replace the author and year with a single figure — ¹ or [1] — so the reader sees only a number and must turn to the list to learn the source's identity. This keeps sentences uncluttered when several studies support one point, which is exactly why medicine and engineering, where that happens constantly, adopted numbered systems. Chicago straddles the two worlds: its Notes–Bibliography system puts the full citation in a footnote, while its Author–Date system behaves like APA. Knowing which in-text mechanism your style uses is as important as getting the reference-list entry right, because a perfect reference list paired with the wrong in-text style is still incorrect referencing.

One detail unites them all: for a direct quotation, you must point the reader to the exact page. APA, MLA and Harvard add a page number to the in-text citation; the numbered styles either add it beside the number or rely on the reader finding the passage in the cited article. Whatever the style, never quote without telling the reader where the words came from.

A four-step method for any article

If you approach each article the same way, citing it in any style becomes a routine you can do almost without thinking. Step one: collect the eight facts — authors, year, article title, journal, volume, issue, pages and DOI — from the article's first page or database record, and write them down once, accurately. Getting these right at the start saves you from re-opening the source repeatedly later.

Step two: identify your style's family. Decide whether your required style is author–date (APA, Harvard), author–page (MLA), footnote (Chicago N-B) or numbered (Vancouver, IEEE). This single decision tells you how the in-text citation works and whether your reference list is alphabetical or in citation order. Step three: arrange the facts into the reference-list entry using the pattern for your style from the examples above, paying attention to the two details machines most often get wrong — the capitalisation of the article title (sentence case for the sciences, quotation marks and title case for the humanities) and the format of the DOI.

Step four: add the matching in-text citation and check the two halves agree — every in-text marker must have an entry in the list, and every entry must be cited at least once. Run this four-step routine for the first few articles consciously, and by the time you reach a long literature review it will be second nature. It is also exactly the discipline that lets a reference manager help rather than hinder: the software handles step three and four mechanically once you have given it the facts from step one.

Should you trust a citation generator?

The "Cite" button on Google Scholar, a database or a library catalogue will hand you a ready-made reference, and for a journal article it is right more often than for trickier sources. But "more often" is not "always": generators regularly mangle the capitalisation of the article title, italicise the wrong element, format the DOI incorrectly, or apply an older edition of the style. Use them as a fast first draft and then check the output against the rules above, because the reference carries your name, not the database's. For a long literature review, the better tool is a full reference manager such as Zotero or Mendeley, which stores every article, inserts citations as you write and builds the reference list in your chosen style — removing the repetitive work while keeping your in-text citations and list in step. Either way, the knowledge in this guide is what lets you catch the errors the machine makes.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Trusting an auto-generated citation without checking capitalisation, italics and the DOI.
• Confusing the volume and issue numbers, or omitting the issue when the style requires it.
• Capitalising every word of the article title in a sentence-case style (APA, Vancouver).
• Italicising the article title — the journal is italicised; the article is not.
• Leaving "doi:" or "Retrieved from" in front of a DOI in APA 7.
• Giving a numbered style (Vancouver, IEEE) an alphabetical reference list.
• Citing a preprint as though it were a peer-reviewed article.

Collect the eight facts once, identify which family your style belongs to, and the same article slots cleanly into any format. When a literature review is built on dozens of articles and the deadline is close, our writers will reference every one correctly in your required style.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides