Cite a journal article in Harvard
Journal articles carry the highest citation weight in academic work, so Harvard (Cite Them Right 12) 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.
Harvard 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.
- Pages use 'pp. X-Y'; include 'doi:' or 'Available at:' for the link.
Worked example
Harvard · journal articleA real journal article formatted using the Harvard rules above.
Gleick, Peter H., and Robert M. Adams, Richard M. Amasino (2010) Climate change and the integrity of science. *Science*, 328(5979), pp. 689-690. doi: 10.1126/science.328.5979.689.
Build your own Harvard reference
Paste a URL, DOI, or ISBN below. The generator is preset to Harvard.
We’ll detect the type and pull metadata via CrossRef (DOIs), Open Library (ISBNs), or Open Graph tags (URLs). Edit anything before copying.
Citation fields
Harvard journal article citation guide
The Harvard journal article and its quotation marks
The Harvard journal reference has one feature that catches out students arriving from APA: the article title goes in single quotation marks, while the journal name is italicised. The Cite Them Right pattern is Author (Year) 'Title of article', Title of Journal, Volume(Issue), pp. page-range. So a real entry reads Gleick, P.H. et al. (2010) 'Climate change and the integrity of science', Science, 328(5979), pp. 689-690. The single quotes around the article title and the comma placement are the details markers look at first.
Harvard keeps the author-date logic throughout: the year in parentheses sits directly after the author so it lines up with your in-text citation. The volume and issue are given as 328(5979) with the issue in parentheses, similar to APA, but unlike APA the volume is not italicised in most Harvard variants — only the journal title is. The page range is prefixed with pp. and uses a hyphen or en dash depending on your guide.
DOIs, online access, and the access date
For an article read online, Cite Them Right Harvard adds locator information after the page range. If a DOI exists, give it, often introduced with doi: or as a full https://doi.org/ link depending on your institution's preference. If there is no DOI, use Available at: followed by the URL and then an access date in parentheses, mirroring the website pattern. So an online-only article can end ...pp. 689-690. Available at: URL (Accessed: 15 January 2025).
This is a point of real variation between Harvard guides: some require the Available at: and access date for every online article, others only when there is no DOI, and a few omit them for stable journal articles entirely. Because Harvard has no single authority, your department's example entries are decisive. When in doubt, include the DOI and the access date, since extra locator detail is rarely penalised whereas a missing one often is.
Authors, et al., and in-text citation
In text, a Harvard journal citation is author and year: (Gleick et al., 2010). For a direct quotation, add the page: (Gleick et al., 2010, p. 689). The et al. rule depends on author count and on your guide — commonly, three or fewer authors are all named in text while four or more collapse to the first author and et al., but the threshold can differ, so confirm it. In the reference list, Cite Them Right often asks for all authors to be listed in full regardless of how many there are.
Because the journal article is the highest-stakes academic source, this is the reference to get exactly right, and the single quotation marks around the article title are the easiest mark to lose. Use the generator below to order the fields, then verify three Harvard-specific things: the article title is in single quotes, only the journal name is italicised, and the page range carries the pp. prefix. Then cross-check the volume and issue against the published article rather than a preprint, which may show different numbering.