Citation guides

How to Cite a Journal Article: APA, MLA, Harvard, Vancouver

How to reference a journal article in APA 7, MLA 9, Harvard and Vancouver: DOIs, volume and issue, no DOI, preprints and papers with 21 or more authors.

Ihsan Hossain25 July 2026Updated 6 October 2026 10 min read

Journal articles are the backbone of academic writing, and they are also the source type with the most moving parts: authors, year, article title, journal name, volume, issue, page range and a DOI. Get the order right once and every article you cite afterwards follows the same shape.

What you need before you start

Collect these seven pieces from the article's first page or its landing page. If one genuinely does not exist, the style tells you what to do, but never leave a field blank and hope nobody notices.

Authors: every name, in the order printed on the article, not alphabetically.
Year of publication.
Article title.
Journal name, written in full rather than the abbreviation, except in Vancouver.
Volume, and the issue when the journal uses them.
Page range of the whole article.
DOI, if the article has one.

APA journal article reference

Sentence case for the article title, title case and italics for the journal, italics for the volume, and the DOI as a full link with no full stop after it. More APA patterns are in the APA referencing guide.

APA 7 reference list entry

Kruger, J., & Dunning, D. (1999). Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1121–1134. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121

APA in-text citation

(Kruger & Dunning, 1999)
Three or more authors:  (Seidenberg et al., 2020)

MLA journal article reference

MLA puts the article title in quotation marks and italicises the journal, labels the volume and issue with "vol." and "no.", and writes the DOI with the https://doi.org/ prefix. The MLA citation generator handles the punctuation for you.

MLA 9 works cited entry

Kruger, Justin, and David Dunning. "Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 77, no. 6, 1999, pp. 1121-34, https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121.

MLA in-text citation

(Kruger and Dunning 1125)

Harvard journal article reference

Harvard has no single authority, so departments publish their own variants. The shape below follows Cite Them Right, 13th edition (2025); check your course guide, or use the Harvard reference generator.

Harvard reference list entry

Kruger, J. and Dunning, D. (1999) 'Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments', Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), pp. 1121–1134. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.77.6.1121

Harvard in-text citation

(Kruger and Dunning, 1999)
Four or more authors:  (Petty et al., 2008)

Vancouver journal article reference

Vancouver is the numeric style used across medicine and nursing, including at Swedish institutions such as Karolinska. Sources are numbered in the order they first appear in your text, and journal names are abbreviated to their standard form.

Vancouver reference list entry

1. Kruger J, Dunning D. Unskilled and unaware of it: how difficulties in recognizing one's own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessments. J Pers Soc Psychol. 1999;77(6):1121-34.

Vancouver in-text citation

Self-assessment has been studied in detail (1).

Quick-reference: the same article in four styles

Style	Article title	Volume/issue	In-text
APA 7	Sentence case, no quotes	77(6), 1121–1134	(Kruger & Dunning, 1999)
MLA 9	Title Case in "quotes"	vol. 77, no. 6, pp. 1121-34	(Kruger and Dunning 1125)
Harvard	Sentence case in 'quotes'	77(6), pp. 1121–1134	(Kruger and Dunning, 1999)
Vancouver	Sentence case, no quotes	1999;77(6):1121-34	(1)

Difficult cases, answered

Article with no DOI

End the APA reference after the page range if you read it through a library database. Add a URL only when the article is freely readable on the open web. Never paste the database link from your browser bar, because it usually contains a session token that stops working within hours.

APA template, no DOI

Surname, A. A. (Year). Title of article. Journal Name, 45(2), 101–118.

Article published online first

The article has a DOI but no volume, issue or final pages yet. Say so explicitly rather than leaving gaps, and update the reference if the final version appears before you submit.

APA template, advance online publication

Surname, A. A. (Year). Title of article. Journal Name. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/...

Preprint (not yet peer reviewed)

Label it as a preprint and name the repository. This is an academic point rather than a formatting one: your reader needs to know the work has not been through review, and examiners notice when a preprint is presented as though it were a published study.

APA, preprint

Kingma, D. P., & Ba, J. (2014). Adam: A method for stochastic optimization [Preprint]. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/1412.6980

Article with twenty-one or more authors

Large collaborations in physics and medicine routinely list hundreds. APA gives the first nineteen, an ellipsis, then the final author. Vancouver lists the first six followed by "et al."

APA and Vancouver

APA:        Surname, A. A., Surname, B. B., [authors 3 to 19 in full] . . . Surname, Z. Z. (Year). Title. Journal, 45(2), 101–118. https://doi.org/...
Vancouver:  1. Surname A, Surname B, Surname C, Surname D, Surname E, Surname F, et al. Title. Abbrev. Year;45(2):101-18.

Article in a journal with no issue number

Some journals number pages continuously through a volume and publish no issue numbers. Simply omit the issue and keep the volume.

APA template, volume only

Surname, A. A. (Year). Title of article. Journal Name, 45, 101–118. https://doi.org/...

Article you read as a PDF

The format you read it in changes nothing. Cite the article itself using the details on its first page. There is no need to mention that it was a PDF, and no need to record where the file sits on your computer.

Article in a language other than your own

Give the original title, then a translation in square brackets. APA and Harvard expect the bracketed translation; MLA treats it as optional.

APA template, translated title

Surname, A. A. (Year). Title in the original language [Title in English]. Journal Name, 45(2), 101–118.

Article that has been retracted

Never cite a retracted paper as though its findings stand. If you must discuss it, say so in your text and add the retraction notice in parentheses at the end of the reference (APA), so your reader is not misled.

APA, retracted article

Joly, J. F., Stapel, D. A., & Lindenberg, S. M. (2008). Silence and table manners: When environments activate norms. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 34(8), 1047–1056. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167208318401 (Retraction published 2012, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38[10], 1378)

Common mistakes

Copying the author order from the database. Some databases sort authors alphabetically. The reference must follow the order printed on the article, because that order carries meaning about contribution.
Abbreviating the journal name outside Vancouver. APA, MLA and Harvard want the full name: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, not J Pers Soc Psychol.
Citing the abstract only. If you have read only the abstract, you cannot fairly cite the study's findings. Get the full text or leave it out.
Using the database URL. Proxy and session links break. Use the DOI, which is permanent by design.
Giving only the first page. APA, MLA and Harvard want the full range of the article, not just where it starts.

Let the DOI do the work

A DOI is a unique key into CrossRef, the registry that publishers file their metadata with. That means a correct reference can be built from the identifier alone, with no typing and no transcription errors in author names or page ranges. Paste a DOI or an article link into the citation generator and the fields come back filled in, in whichever of the 150+ styles your course requires.

Written by Ihsan Hossain

Founder of CitApp, a citation tool built to make source formatting effortless for students. Guides on this blog are checked against the style guides' own rules and university library guides. Last full check: October 2026.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to include the DOI?

In APA, yes, whenever one exists. Vancouver treats the DOI as optional, though many courses ask for it. Harvard variants usually expect it too. MLA prefers a DOI over a URL but accepts either. A DOI is a permanent identifier, so a reference with one stays usable even when the journal redesigns its site, which is exactly why styles ask for it.

How do I find the DOI of an article?

It is normally printed on the first page of the PDF and on the article landing page, usually near the title or in the sidebar. If you cannot see one, search the title on the CrossRef website, which covers most journal-article DOIs. Pasting the article link or title into CitApp resolves it automatically.

What if the article has no DOI?

Older articles, many humanities journals and some regional publications never received one. In APA, end the reference after the page range if you read it in a database, or add the URL if the article is freely available on the open web. Do not invent a DOI, and do not use the database link, which is often session-specific and will break.

What is the difference between volume and issue?

The volume usually covers a year of publication and the issue is one instalment within it. In APA they are written as 45(2), meaning volume 45, issue 2, with only the volume italicised. APA 7 asks for the issue number whenever the journal has one, even if the pages run continuously through the volume.

How do I cite an article that is published online first?

When an article is available with a DOI but has no volume, issue or page numbers yet, cite it as an advance online publication. Write the year, the article title, the journal name, then "Advance online publication" in place of the missing numbers, followed by the DOI. Update the reference once the final version appears.

Can I cite a preprint the same way as a published article?

No, and the difference matters academically. A preprint has not been peer reviewed, so it must be labelled as one, with the repository named (arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv). Treat the findings as provisional, and if the paper is later published in a journal, cite the published version instead.