How to Cite a Journal Article

Take a real article: Paul Craig, “Theory of Judicial Review,” Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, volume 29, 2013, pages 123-145.

Same facts, five rows. Nothing about the article changed between rows one and five. Only the wrapping did.

The pattern underneath each style

• Harvard: Surname, Initial. (Year) ‘Article title’, Journal Name, Volume(Issue), pp. Pages.
• APA 7th: Surname, Initial. (Year). Article title. Journal Name, Volume(Issue), Pages.
• MLA 9th: Surname, First name. “Article Title.” Journal Name, vol. Volume, no. Issue, Year, pp. Pages.
• OSCOLA: Full name, ‘Article Title’ (Year) Volume Journal Name Page.
• Vancouver: Surname Initial. Article title. Journal Abbreviation. Year;Volume(Issue):Pages.

Swap in your own author, title and journal and you have a finished reference, no searching required.

Checking a journal is real before you cite it

Crossref (crossref.org) will tell you whether a DOI actually resolves to a registered publication. The Directory of Open Access Journals (doaj.org) lists open-access titles that have been through an editorial vetting process. Both are free, both take under a minute, and both catch a predatory or fake journal before it ends up in your reference list.

No DOI

Some articles, especially older or smaller-journal ones, never had a DOI assigned. Use a stable link instead – the publisher’s page, not a database URL that only works while you’re logged into your university’s network. And the database itself is never the citation. “Found on JSTOR” describes where you were sitting, not what you read. Cite the article as you would a print copy.

Multiple authors

APA has used “et al.” from the first citation for three-plus authors since its 7th edition. Harvard and MLA didn’t inherit that threshold from APA – each style set its own rule, so don’t assume one governs the others just because the results look alike on the page.

Before you finalise a reference

• Journal name italicised, article title not
• Volume and issue, or an article number – one of the two, never neither
• DOI where it exists, a stable link where it doesn’t
• Preprints labelled as preprints, checked against whether a published version now exists
• The citation points at the article, not the database or search tool you found it through
• An unfamiliar journal checked against Crossref or DOAJ

Common Mistakes

Italicising the article title instead of the journal name is the single most common reversal, and it happens to students who read the rule correctly the first time and then forget it under deadline pressure. After that: citing a preprint once its peer-reviewed version already exists, dropping an article number because a template only ever showed page ranges, and citing “Google Scholar” as if it published the article rather than just indexed it.

Getting these small details right matters more than most students expect, which is why many rely on pay for assignment services to double-check their references before final submission.

Answers to the specific questions

Do you need a DOI for every article? Only if one was assigned. No DOI, no invented one – a stable URL does the job.

Does it matter that you read the article through your university’s library system rather than in print? No. Cite the article itself; the database was just the route there.

What if there’s no listed author at all? The title moves into the author’s slot. Same fix, every style.

What about an article with only an article number, no page range? The number sits where the pages would. Most current style guides cover this directly now, even where older examples still assume every journal prints on paper.

Full rules for each style: Harvard, APA 7th, OSCOLA, MLA. And how to avoid plagiarism if you’re using any of this to build an actual argument rather than just filling a reference list.