Citing Journal Articles
APA: Citing Journal Articles from Lawrence W. Tyree Library on Vimeo. View a transcript here.
In this tutorial, you will learn the basics for citing journal articles with and without a DOI and how to cite open access journal articles.
Every APA reference needs four parts: author, date, title, and source. As you go through these examples, you will learn how to identify these four parts and how to place and format them into a proper APA reference.
Example 1: A Journal Article with a DOI
For the first example, you will learn how to cite a journal article with a DOI. Often, you will find journal articles online using the library's databases or other online resources.
The first step is to identify the author of the article. The author of this article is Brittanie Atteberry-Ash,
To list an author, write the last name, a comma, and the first and middle initials.
Example:
Atteberry-Ash.
Next, identify when this article was published. For journal articles, you typically only need the year. In this case, this article was published in 2022. You can usually find the date at the top of the article, the cover of the journal, or, for online articles, the article's record.
List the date after the author(s), in parentheses, followed by a period.
Example:
Atteberry-Ash, B. (2022).
Now, identify the title of the article. The title will usually be at the very top of the article, in a larger size font.
List the title of the article after the date. Make sure you only capitalize the first word of the title, the first word of the subtitle, which comes after a colon, and any proper nouns. End with a period. In this title, only the words Social and A are capitalized.
Example:
Atteberry-Ash, B. (2022). Social work and social justice: A conceptual review.
For the last component, you need the source. For an article, this is the title of the journal, volume, issue, which is sometimes called number, and page numbers of the article. Usually this information can be found on the cover of the journal, on the table of contents, or at the top of the article. For the page numbers, you should look at the first and last pages of the article. For online articles, this information is usually found in the article's record.
Type the journal title, in italics, capitalizing all major words, a comma, the volume, also in italics, the number or issue in parentheses, a comma, and then the page numbers of the article.
Example: Atteberry-Ash, B. (2022). Social work and social justice: A conceptual review. Social Work, 68 (1), 38-46.
The last element of the source is the DOI, which stands for Digital Object Identifier. A DOI can be found in the article’s record or on the first page of the article.
Type the DOI, using the prefix https://doi.org/. There is no period after the DOI.
Example: Atteberry-Ash, B. (2022). Social work and social justice: A conceptual review. Social Work, 68 (1), 38-46. https://doi.org/10.1093/sw/swac042
If you refer to a work in your paper, either by directly quoting, paraphrasing, or by referring to main ideas, you will need to include an in-text parenthetical citation. There are a number of ways to do this. In this example, a signal phrase is used to introduce a direct quote. The author's name is given in the text, and the publication date and page number(s) are enclosed in parentheses at the beginning and end of the sentence.
Example:
Atteberry-Ash (2022) notes "social workers are called on to practice socially just values and to address the consequences of oppression, specifically lost opportunity, social disenfranchisement, and isolation" (p. 38).
Example 2: Multiple Authors and No DOI
In this example, most of the components needed for the reference can be found in the article’s record. This article, however, has multiple authors and does not have a DOI listed in its record or in the article itself.
Format all the citation components of this journal article like the first example. For multiple authors, list the authors in the order they are listed in the article. Use a comma to separate each author and an ampersand (&) should be placed before the last author’s name. This applies for articles with up to twenty authors. Since there is no DOI listed for this article, simply omit that element. The reference will conclude after the page numbers.
Example:
Penprase, B., Mileto, L., Bittinger, A., Hranchook, A. M., Atchley, J. A., Bergakker, S., Eimers, T., & Franson, H. (2012). The use of high-fidelity simulation in the admissions process: One nurse anesthesia program’s experience. AANA Journal, 80(1), 43–48.
If you refer to a work in your paper that has three or more authors, the in-text citation will include the first author's name only, followed by et al. which means "and all the rest."
Example:
Penprase et al. (2012) states that "Admission into nurse anesthesia programs is known to be a competitive process among a diverse pool of candidates" (p. 43).
Example 3: An Open Access Journal Article
This article was found in PLOS One which is an open access journal. Open access journal articles are articles with the full text freely available online and do not require logging in.
You will need all of the same information from the previous examples to cite an open access article. In this example, most of this information can be found at the top of the article.
In this example, the article's volume, issue, and the article number are found in the citation provided by the journal. Article numbers are used in place of page numbers in some online journals.
The format for open access journals is the same as the other examples. In this example, an article number is used in place of the page numbers. After the issue number, type Article and then the article number. If an open access journal does not provide a DOI, you may provide the URL of the article instead. Only include the URL if it directly brings you to the full text of the article without logging in.
Example:
Francis, H. M., Stevenson, R. J., Chambers, J. R., Gupta, D., Newey, B., & Lim, C. K. (2019). A brief diet intervention can reduce symptoms of depression in young adults – A randomised controlled trial. PLOS ONE, 14(1), Article e0222768. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0222768
