Research5 min read

How to Cite a Journal Article (APA, MLA, and Chicago)

Journal articles are the most-cited source in academic writing. Here is how to cite one in APA, MLA, and Chicago, and the DOI shortcut that gets the details right.

A document with a highlighted DOI linked by a bracket to a formatted reference entry on a dark field, suggesting a journal article turning into a citation.

The journal article is the workhorse of academic citing, and it has the most moving parts: two titles (the article and the journal), a volume, an issue, a page range, and usually a DOI. Get their order and formatting right and you have the source markers care about most. Here is the clean form in each style, plus the shortcut that saves you typing all of it.

You need the author(s), the year, the article title, the journal name, the volume and issue, the page range, and the DOI if there is one. The article title takes ordinary sentence case; the journal name takes title case and italics.

APA (7th edition)

APA journal

Jumper, J., Evans, R., & Pritzel, A. (2021). Highly accurate protein structure prediction with AlphaFold. *Nature*, *596*(7873), 583-589. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2 — In-text: (Jumper et al., 2021)

MLA (9th edition)

MLA journal

Jumper, John, et al. "Highly Accurate Protein Structure Prediction with AlphaFold." *Nature*, vol. 596, no. 7873, 2021, pp. 583-89. doi:10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2.

Chicago (17th edition)

Chicago journal

Jumper, John, et al. "Highly Accurate Protein Structure Prediction with AlphaFold." *Nature* 596, no. 7873 (2021): 583-89. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2.

Paste the DOI or link and the Citation Generator pulls the real record and formats it in APA, MLA, Chicago, and more.

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The DOI shortcut

Almost every journal article has a DOI, a permanent ID that looks like 10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2. It is the single most useful thing you can copy, because it points to the article's official record. Paste the DOI (or its https://doi.org/ link) into a citation tool and it can pull the verified author list, title, journal, volume, and pages straight from the source, so you are not retyping them from a PDF and hoping you got the volume number right.

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