Cite a journal article in APA 7
Journal articles carry the highest citation weight in academic work, so APA 7 (2020) is strict about volume, issue, page range, and the DOI. Get the punctuation wrong and a marker will spot it instantly. The rules below cover the exact order and the small fields students miss most often.
APA 7 rules for a journal article
- Article title is plain text (or in quotes for MLA/Chicago), journal name is italicized.
- Volume number is italicized in APA, plain in MLA/Chicago/Harvard.
- Issue number goes in parentheses immediately after the volume.
- Page range uses an en dash (e.g., 123-145), no spaces, no double hyphens.
- Include the DOI as a full URL (https://doi.org/...) if one exists, otherwise the URL.
- Italicize the volume number along with the journal name.
Worked example
APA 7 · journal articleA real journal article formatted using the APA 7 rules above.
Gleick, P. H., Adams, R. M., & Amasino, R. M. (2010). Climate change and the integrity of science. *Science*, *328*(5979), 689-690. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.328.5979.689
Build your own APA 7 reference
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Citation fields
APA 7 journal article citation guide
Why the journal article is APA's flagship reference
APA was built by and for the social and behavioural sciences, where the peer-reviewed journal article is the unit of evidence, so the journal reference is the one APA defines most precisely. The full pattern is Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of the article in sentence case. Title of the Journal in title case and italics, Volume(Issue), page-range. https://doi.org/xxxx. Every comma, italic, and bracket in that line is load-bearing, and this is the reference markers scrutinise hardest because getting it right signals that you can read a database record correctly.
Two things are italicised and nothing else: the journal name and the volume number. The article title stays in plain sentence case with no quotation marks, which surprises students coming from MLA. The issue number goes in parentheses straight after the volume with no space — 12(3), not 12 (3) — and it is not italicised. The page range uses an en dash and no pp. prefix. If you can reproduce that line from memory you can cite the majority of academic sources you will meet.
DOIs, the single most important field
APA 7 treats the DOI as the preferred locator for any article that has one, and almost every article published since roughly 2000 does. Format it as a full clickable link beginning https://doi.org/ followed by the DOI string, with no label, no doi: prefix, and no full stop after it. Do not paste the proxy URL from your university library, because that link only resolves for people inside your institution; the doi.org link resolves for everyone. If, and only if, the article genuinely has no DOI and was read online, you may use the URL of the journal's article page instead.
A common trap is the advance online publication. If the article has been assigned a DOI but not yet a volume, issue, and page range, you cite it with the available fields and the note Advance online publication before the DOI. Once the article is formally issued, update your reference. Predatory and low-quality journals sometimes display a DOI that does not resolve — always click yours to confirm it works before you submit.
Authors, et al., and in-text form
APA 7 changed the author rule that catches the most people: for a work with three or more authors, you now use the first author followed by et al. in every in-text citation, including the first one. So a paper by Gleick, Adams, and Amasino is cited (Gleick et al., 2010) from the start, never spelled out. In the reference list, however, you list up to twenty authors in full, inserting an ampersand before the last; only with twenty-one or more do you list the first nineteen, an ellipsis, and the final author.
In text, a direct quotation needs a page number, given as (Gleick et al., 2010, p. 689). A paraphrase needs only author and year, though adding the page is good practice and some instructors require it. Paste the DOI into the generator below and it will pull and order the fields for you, but always verify the volume, issue, and page range against the published version, because preprint servers and some databases display the manuscript's draft numbering rather than the final citation.