How do I generate a citation for a journal article?

Search for the title or authors on the Search Articles tab, or paste the DOI. Select the article, choose a style, and the citation is built from its record. Without a DOI, enter the details by hand on the Manual Entry tab.

What do I include when citing a journal article?

The authors, the year, the article title, the journal title, the volume, the issue and the page range, plus the DOI if it has one. APA, MLA and Chicago order these elements differently, but they ask for the same facts.

Can I cite an article without a DOI?

Yes. Give the journal, volume, issue and pages. In APA add the URL only if the article is open to everyone at that address; MLA and Chicago may add a stable URL. Do not add the name of the library database.

How are the authors listed?

APA lists up to 20 authors, then the first 19, an ellipsis and the last. MLA 9 uses the first author and et al. from three authors. Chicago 18 lists up to six in the bibliography and shortens from seven to the first three and et al.; in notes it uses the first author and et al. from three.

What if the article has an article number instead of pages?

Give the article number where the page range would be. Many open-access journals number articles rather than paginate them. Enter the number in the Page(s) box if the record has no page range.

How do I cite an article I read in a database?

Cite the journal article itself: its DOI or stable URL, not the database. The database only matters for items that exist nowhere else.

Which citation styles does the journal article generator support?

APA 7, MLA 9 and Chicago 18 at the top of the list, and any of the other 10,834 styles. Switching style reformats the same record.

Journal Article Citation Generator

Find a journal article by title or author, or paste its DOI, and get the reference and the in-text citation in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 and 10,834 other styles. If the article has no DOI, type the journal, volume, issue and pages by hand. Free, no sign-up.

Language

Saved citations build a full bibliography in the StudioOpen Bibliography Studio

How to Use the Journal Article Citation Generator

1. Find the article. Open the Search Articles tab and type the title or the authors; the search runs against Crossref's catalogue of articles, conference papers and chapters. Select the right result. If you have the DOI, paste it on the URL / DOI / ISBN tab instead.
2. No DOI or no result? Use Manual Entry, choose Journal article and type the authors, year, title, journal, volume, issue and pages.
3. Choose a style. Pick APA, MLA, Chicago or any of the 10,834 styles. The reference and its in-text citation appear together.
4. Check against the article. Compare the volume, issue and page range with the first page of the PDF. Use Edit to correct a field, and Copy when it is right.

What a Journal Article Citation Contains

	APA 7	MLA 9	Chicago 18
Pattern	Author, A. A. (Year). Article title in sentence case. Journal Title, vol(issue), pages. DOI	Author. “Article Title in Title Case.” Journal Title, vol. #, no. #, year, pp. #–#, DOI.	Author. “Article Title.” Journal Title vol, no. # (year): pages. DOI.
Article title	Plain, sentence case	In quotation marks, Title Case	In quotation marks, Title Case
Journal and volume	Italic: journal title and volume	Journal title italic	Journal title italic
Authors	All up to 20; from 21 the first 19, an ellipsis and the last	One, two, or the first author and et al.	Up to six; seven or more: first three and et al.
Page range	Full: 263–291	Shortened: 263–91	Shortened: 263–91

An article with a long author list shows the differences. Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning has 19 authors.

19 authors, from DOI 10.1038/nature14236

APA 7:

Mnih, V., Kavukcuoglu, K., Silver, D., Rusu, A. A., Veness, J., Bellemare, M. G., Graves, A., Riedmiller, M., Fidjeland, A. K., Ostrovski, G., Petersen, S., Beattie, C., Sadik, A., Antonoglou, I., King, H., Kumaran, D., Wierstra, D., Legg, S., & Hassabis, D. (2015). Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning. Nature, 518(7540), 529–533. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14236

APA in-text:

(Mnih et al., 2015)

MLA 9:

Mnih, Volodymyr, et al. “Human-Level Control through Deep Reinforcement Learning.” Nature, vol. 518, no. 7540, 2015, pp. 529–33, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14236.

MLA in-text:

(Mnih et al.)

Chicago bibliography:

Mnih, Volodymyr, Koray Kavukcuoglu, David Silver, et al. “Human-Level Control through Deep Reinforcement Learning.” Nature 518, no. 7540 (2015): 529–33. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14236.

Chicago footnote:

Volodymyr Mnih et al., “Human-Level Control through Deep Reinforcement Learning,” Nature 518, no. 7540 (2015): 529–33, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14236.

A single-author article without a DOI (illustrative details):

No DOI

APA 7:

Doe, J. (2015). Sample article without a DOI. Journal of Examples, 12(3), 45–67.

MLA 9:

Doe, Jane. “Sample Article without a DOI.” Journal of Examples, vol. 12, no. 3, 2015, pp. 45–67.

In the Chicago note, replace the page range with the page you cite.

Common Mistakes

Citing the database. APA and MLA give the journal, not the library database you found it in. Add a DOI or URL, never "ProQuest" or "JSTOR", unless the article exists only there.
Italicizing the article title. Only the journal title is italic; the article title is plain in APA and in quotation marks in MLA and Chicago.
Mixing up volume and issue. The volume is the bigger number and goes with the journal title. The issue is the one in brackets (APA) or after no.
Using the wrong year. Use the year of the volume or issue the article appears in. An online-first article with no issue yet takes the year it was published online.
Leaving out the DOI. Add it whenever the article has one.

Which Tool Do You Need?

You have	Use
An article's title or authors, or details to type	This page
The DOI	DOI Citation Generator
A PDF of the article	PDF Citation Generator
An article that is on arXiv or another preprint server	arXiv Citation Generator
A PubMed ID	PMID Citation Generator

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I generate a citation for a journal article?: Search for the title or authors on the Search Articles tab, or paste the DOI. Select the article, choose a style, and the citation is built from its record. Without a DOI, enter the details by hand on the Manual Entry tab.
What do I include when citing a journal article?: The authors, the year, the article title, the journal title, the volume, the issue and the page range, plus the DOI if it has one. APA, MLA and Chicago order these elements differently, but they ask for the same facts.
Can I cite an article without a DOI?: Yes. Give the journal, volume, issue and pages. In APA add the URL only if the article is open to everyone at that address; MLA and Chicago may add a stable URL. Do not add the name of the library database.
How are the authors listed?: APA lists up to 20 authors, then the first 19, an ellipsis and the last. MLA 9 uses the first author and et al. from three authors. Chicago 18 lists up to six in the bibliography and shortens from seven to the first three and et al.; in notes it uses the first author and et al. from three.
What if the article has an article number instead of pages?: Give the article number where the page range would be. Many open-access journals number articles rather than paginate them. Enter the number in the Page(s) box if the record has no page range.
How do I cite an article I read in a database?: Cite the journal article itself: its DOI or stable URL, not the database. The database only matters for items that exist nowhere else.
Which citation styles does the journal article generator support?: APA 7, MLA 9 and Chicago 18 at the top of the list, and any of the other 10,834 styles. Switching style reformats the same record.

How to cite a Journal Article in each style

Format rules, templates, and worked examples for the styles most often required.

All source types and styles →

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