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Citing Your Sources in APA 7th: Journal Articles

How to Cite Journal Articles

Online Journal Articles

Journal Article from Library Database (With DOI)
Format:

Author(s). (Year of Publication). Title of article: Capital letter also for subtitle. Name of Journal, Volume Number(Issue Number), Page Range. https://doi.org/DOI

Example:

Guillen, J. (2016). Does financial openness matter in the relationship between financial development and income distribution in Latin America?" Emerging Markets Finance & Trade, 52(5), 1145-1155. https://doi.org/10.1080/1540496X.2015.1046337

Journal Article from Library Database (No DOI)
Format:

Author(s). (Year of Publication). Title of article: Capital letter also for subtitle. Name of Journal, Volume Number(Issue Number), Page Range. 

Example:

Lowy, A. S., Rodgers, R. F., Franko, D. L., Pluhar, E., & Webb, J. B. (2021). Body image and internalization of appearance ideals in Black women: An update and call for culturally-sensitive research. Body Image, 39, 313–27. 

Journal Article from a Website
Format:

Author(s). (Year of Publication). Title of article: Capital letter also for subtitle. Name of Journal, Volume Number(Issue Number), Page Range [if given]. URL

Example:

Butler, J. (2017). Where access meets multimodality: The case of ASL music videos. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 21(1). http://technorhetoric.net/21.1/topoi/butler/index.html

Print Journal Articles

Journal Article in Print
Format:

Author(s). (Year of Publication). Title of article: Capital letter also for subtitle. Name of Journal, Volume Number(Issue Number), Page Range. 

Example:

Kushkova, A. (2011). At the center of the table. Russian Studies in History, 50(1), 44-96.

How to Format Author Names

One Author

Format:

Last Name, First Initial.
or
Last Name, First Initial. Middle Initial (if provided in source).

Name Examples:

Anzaldúa, G.
Kendi, I. X.
Wallace, D. F.

Citation Example:

Anzaldúa, G. (2012). Borderlands / la frontera: The new mestiza (4th ed.). Aunt Lute Books. 

Two Authors

Format:

Last Name, A. A., & Last Name, B. B.

Example:

Wykes, M., & Gunter, B. (2005). The media and body image: If looks could kill. Sage.

Three to Twenty Authors

Format:

Last Name, A. A., Last Name, B. B., & Last Name, C. C.

Example:

Nguyen, T., Carnevale, J. J., Scholer, A. A., Miele, D. B., & Fujita, K. (2019). Metamotivational knowledge of the role of high-level and low-level construal in goal-relevant task performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 117(5), 879-899. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000166

More Than Twenty Authors

Format:

Last Name, A. A., Last Name, B. B., Last Name, C. C., Last Name, D. D., Last Name, E. E., Last Name, F. F., Last Name, G. G., ... Last Name, Z. Z.

Example:

Pegion, K., Kirtman, B. P., Becker, E., Collins, D. C., LaJoie, E., Burgman, R., Bell, R., DelSole, R., Min, D., Zhu, Y., Li, W., Sinsky, E., Guan, H., Gottschalck, J., Metzger, E. J., Barton, N. P., Achuthavarier, D., Marshak, J., Koster, R., . . .  Kim, H. (2019). The subseasonal experiment (SubX): A multimodel subseasonal prediction experiment. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 100(10), 2043-2061. https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-18-0270.1

Group or Corporate Author

If the Group Author Is Different From Publisher

Format:

If the group author and the publisher are different entities, list the Group Name as the author. 

Example:

Calgary Educational Partnership Foundation. (1996). Employability skills: Creating my future. Nelson.

If the Group Author and Publisher Are the Same

Format:

If the group author and the publisher are the same, follow the "No Author" rules instead.

No Author

Format:

If a source has no author, skip the author and start with the title. Do not use "Anonymous" as the author name unless the work is signed as "Anonymous."

Example:

"How to Teach Yourself Guitar." eHow, Demand Media, www.ehow.com/how_5298173_teach-yourself-guitar.html. Accessed 24 June 2016.

One Author

Format:

(Last Name, Year, p. Page Number)

Example:

(Anzaldúa, 2012, p. 30)

Two Authors

Format:

(Last Name & Last Name, Year, p. Page Number)

Example:

(Wykes & Gunter, 2012, p. 53)

Three or More Authors

Format:

(First Author's Last Name et al., Year, p. Page Number)

Example:

(Nguyen et al., 2019, p. 880)

Group or Corporate Author

Format:

(Group Name [Abbreviation if Any], Year, p. Page Number)

If a group author uses an abbreviation, you can introduce the abbreviation in brackets the first time you cite them; in subsequent citations, you can use only the abbreviation.

Examples:

(Calgary Educational Partnership Foundation, 1996, p. 230)

(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2019)
After the first citation: (CDC, 2019).

If your full citation for a group author starts with the title rather than the group's name, follow the "No Author" in-text citation rules instead.

No Author

Format:

(Title of Longer Work or "Title of Shorter Work," Year, p. Page Number)

Examples:

(Fair Housing, 1985, p. 15)

("How to Teach," 2016)

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I format dates?

Many sources only require a publication year. For sources that require more information, dates should be formatted like this: Year, Month Day. Sources might provide a full date, only a month and year, or sometimes a season (such as Spring 2021); include as much information as the source provides. Do not abbreviate any month names.
Example: 2021, October 17.

If there is no date, use "n.d." in place of the date.

What is a DOI?

Digital Object Identifiers, or DOIs, are unique numbers or hyperlinks assigned to some online resources, such as journal articles, to make them easier to find.

If a DOI is provided for a source, include it at the end of your citation after any page numbers. In your References list, you should always format a DOI as a URL beginning with "https://doi.org/" followed immediately by the DOI number.

Example: For DOI "10.5642/jhummath.20170120," the URL version would be: https://doi.org/10.5642/jhummath.20170120

If no DOI is provided but a permalink or stable link is present, you can use that instead.

What if some information is missing?

If a source has no date, include the initials "n.d." (short for "no date") where you would normally put a date. If a source is missing any other information that you need for your citation, you can generally skip that element and move on to the next element in the citation. 

Examples: Some sources don't have an author; in this case, we skip the author and start our citation with the title. Most academic journals are published in volumes and issues, but some only have volumes; in this case, we list the volume number and skip the issue number. 

What if I don't know which source type I'm citing?

If you're not sure what type of source you're working with, don't worry! This is a very common challenge. Check out our page on Identifying Source Types.

What if I need to cite multiple sources by the same author?

References List: List multiple works by the same author in order of year of publication from earliest to latest. Usually, the year of publication will be enough to distinguish between sources. If the same author has published multiple sources within the same year, add letters to the end of the year and organize alphabetically to distinguish between them, e.g. 2019a, 2019b, 2019c.

In-Text Citations: Since in-text citations include the year of publication, no extra step is usually needed to distinguish between sources. If your full citation includes letters to distinguish between sources published in the same year, include the letters in your in-text citations as well. 

How do I cite multiple sources in a single in-text citation?

You can separate multiple in-text citations with a semi-colon to cite multiple sources at the same time. List the in-text citations in the order you used them in your sentence or paragraph. 

Example: (Bennett, 2015; Smith, 2014). 

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