Journal article citation generator
Cite any scientific or academic journal article in any citation style. Paste a DOI or search by title.
or fill in the details below
How to cite a journal article
Most journal article citations never need the form: the DOI or title is enough.
Step 1
Paste the DOI or title
A DOI, a PubMed ID, an arXiv ID or the article’s title all work. We fill in the authors, journal, volume, issue, pages and DOI.
Step 2
Check the article
If the article has been retracted, we say so. If it’s a preprint that was later published, we offer the published version.
Step 3
Copy your citation
Add the reference entry to your list, and add a page number to the in-text citation when you quote. Check that every source in your list is real with the Citation Checker.
How to cite a journal article in APA
An APA journal article citation gives the authors, the year, the article title in sentence case, the journal and volume in italics, the issue, the pages and the DOI as a link.
Format
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of article. Journal Name, Volume(Issue), pages. https://doi.org/xxxx
Three authors
LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y., & Hinton, G. (2015). Deep learning. Nature, 521(7553), 436–444. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539
In-text citation, with a page
Parenthetical: (LeCun et al., 2015, p. 438)
Narrative: LeCun et al. (2015, p. 438)
An article number instead of pages
Piwowar, H. A., Day, R. S., & Fridsma, D. B. (2007). Sharing detailed research data is associated with increased citation rate. PLOS ONE, 2(3), Article e308. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0000308
More than 20 authors
Wilkinson, M. D., Dumontier, M., Aalbersberg, Ij. J., Appleton, G., Axton, M., Baak, A., Blomberg, N., Boiten, J.-W., da Silva Santos, L. B., Bourne, P. E., Bouwman, J., Brookes, A. J., Clark, T., Crosas, M., Dillo, I., Dumon, O., Edmunds, S., Evelo, C. T., Finkers, R., … Mons, B. (2016). The FAIR guiding principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Scientific Data, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18
APA lists the first 19 authors, an ellipsis, then the last author.
How to cite a journal article in MLA
An MLA journal article citation gives the authors, the title in quotation marks, the journal in italics, the volume, issue, date and pages, then the DOI.
Format
Author. “Title of Article.” Journal Name, vol. #, no. #, Year, pp. #. DOI.
Three or more authors
LeCun, Yann, et al. “Deep Learning.” Nature, vol. 521, no. 7553, May 2015, pp. 436–44, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539.
Three or more authors: the first author, then et al.
In-text citation, with a page
Parenthetical: (LeCun et al. 438)
How to cite a journal article in Chicago
Chicago gives the authors, the title in quotation marks, the journal in italics with the volume and issue, the year in parentheses, the pages and the DOI.
Bibliography
LeCun, Yann, Yoshua Bengio, and Geoffrey Hinton. “Deep Learning.” Nature 521, no. 7553 (2015): 436–44. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539.
Footnote, with a page
Yann LeCun et al., “Deep Learning,” Nature 521, no. 7553 (2015): 438, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539.
Many authors
Wilkinson, Mark D., Michel Dumontier, IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg, et al. “The FAIR Guiding Principles for Scientific Data Management and Stewardship.” Scientific Data 3, no. 1 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18.
For seven or more authors, the Chicago bibliography lists the first three and et al.
How to cite a scientific article in IEEE and Vancouver
Science and engineering styles number their sources. The in-text citation is a number in brackets that points to the reference list.
IEEE
[1] Y. LeCun, Y. Bengio, and G. Hinton, “Deep learning,” Nature, vol. 521, no. 7553, pp. 436–444, May 2015, doi: 10.1038/nature14539.
IEEE, an article number
[1] H. A. Piwowar, R. S. Day, and D. B. Fridsma, “Sharing Detailed Research Data Is Associated with Increased Citation Rate,” PLOS ONE, vol. 2, no. 3, Art. no. e308, Mar. 2007, doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000308.
Pick Vancouver, AMA or another numbered style from the style menu above the form to see the same article in that style.
Where to find a DOI, and what to do if there isn’t one
A DOI is a permanent link to an article. Look for it on the first page of the PDF, near the abstract on the journal’s website, or in the database record. It starts with 10., like 10.1038/nature14539.
APA and MLA write it as a link: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539. If an article has no DOI, APA and MLA use the URL of the journal’s page for the article, or leave the link out for a print article.
How to cite an article from a database (JSTOR, EBSCO, ProQuest)
Cite the article itself, with its DOI when it has one. APA leaves out common databases like JSTOR, EBSCO and ProQuest, because the article is the same wherever you found it.
MLA treats the database as a second container: it goes after the pages, in italics, before the DOI or URL. Add it in the Database field under More options, and the generator puts it in the right place for each style.
How to cite a preprint
A preprint has been shared before peer review, on a server like arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv or PsyArXiv.
APA
Vaswani, A., Shazeer, N., Parmar, N., Uszkoreit, J., Jones, L., Gomez, A. N., Kaiser, L., & Polosukhin, I. (2017). Attention is all you need (arXiv:1706.03762). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1706.03762
MLA
Vaswani, Ashish, et al. “Attention Is All You Need.” arXiv:1706.03762, arXiv, 2017, https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1706.03762.
Many preprints are published later in a journal or conference. If the published version exists, cite that instead. Paste an arXiv ID above, and we offer the published version when we can find it.
Frequently asked questions
How do I cite a journal article in APA?
Give the authors, the year, the article title in sentence case, the journal name and volume in italics, the issue in parentheses, the pages and the DOI as a https://doi.org link. In the text, cite the authors and year, for example (LeCun et al., 2015).
How do I cite a scholarly article with no page numbers?
Many online journals number their articles instead of paging them. APA writes Article and the number, like Article e308, in place of the pages. In the text, use a paragraph number for a quote.
What if the article has been retracted?
We check every DOI and say clearly when an article has been retracted. Most instructors expect you to find another source. If you keep it, say in your paper that it was retracted.
How do I cite an article that is in press?
Choose In press under Publication status. APA writes (in press) in place of the year, and MLA writes forthcoming.
Can I search by PubMed ID or arXiv ID?
Yes. A DOI, a PMID, a PMCID, an arXiv ID or the article’s title all work in the box above.
Is this journal article citation generator free?
Yes. It’s free with no signup, and the articles you cite here go into the same list as the main Citation Generator.
How do I check that all my sources are real?
Run your reference list through the Citation Checker, linked above. It checks each source against scholarly databases and flags formatting mistakes.