A journal article reference in APA 7 has four parts: who wrote it, when it was published, what it is called, and where to find it (the journal, volume, issue, pages and DOI). Get those four in the right order and with the right punctuation and you’re done.
Format
Author, A. A., & Author, B. B. (Year). Title of the article in sentence case. Title of the Journal, volume(issue), first page–last page. https://doi.org/xxxx
Here is a real article formatted in APA 7:
Suri, T., & Jack, W. (2016). The long-run poverty and gender impacts of mobile money. Science, 354(6317), 1288–1292. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aah5309
In-text: (Suri & Jack, 2016, p. 1290)
The parts of the reference, one by one
- Authors. Surname first, then initials with a full stop and a space after each (Suri, T.). Separate authors with commas and put an ampersand (&) before the last one, even if there are only two.
- Year. In brackets, followed by a full stop: (2016). You don’t need the month or day for journal articles.
- Article title. In sentence case: capitalise only the first word, the first word after a colon, and proper nouns such as names of people, countries and organisations. No italics, no quotation marks.
- Journal title. In title case (capitalise the main words) and in italics, exactly as the journal writes it. Don’t abbreviate it.
- Volume and issue. The volume number in italics, then the issue number in brackets with no space and no italics: 354(6317).
- Pages. The full range with an en dash: 1288–1292. No “pp.”.
- DOI. As a full link, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aah5309, with no full stop at the end and no “Retrieved from”.
One, two, three or more authors
The reference list names every author up to 20. In-text citations get shorter as the number of authors grows.
Granovetter, M. S. (1973). The strength of weak ties. American Journal of Sociology, 78(6), 1360–1380. https://doi.org/10.1086/225469
In-text: (Granovetter, 1973)
Aker, J. C., & Mbiti, I. M. (2010). Mobile phones and economic development in Africa. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24(3), 207–232. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.24.3.207
In-text: (Aker & Mbiti, 2010)
Banerjee, A., Duflo, E., Glennerster, R., & Kinnan, C. (2015). The miracle of microfinance? Evidence from a randomized evaluation. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 7(1), 22–53. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20130533
In-text: (Banerjee et al., 2015)
For three or more authors, the in-text citation uses the first author’s surname plus et al. from the very first time you cite the work: (Banerjee et al., 2015). The reference list still shows all of them.
In-text citations
APA uses the author–date system. There are two ways to write a citation:
- Parenthetical, at the end of the sentence: Mobile money lifted households out of poverty (Suri & Jack, 2016).
- Narrative, as part of the sentence: Suri and Jack (2016) found that mobile money lifted households out of poverty.
In parenthetical citations the authors are joined with &; in narrative citations, with the word and. When you quote directly, add the page number: (Suri & Jack, 2016, p. 1290). For a longer guide, see APA in-text citations.
When there is no DOI
- From an academic database (such as JSTOR, EBSCO or ProQuest) and no DOI: end the reference after the page range. Don’t add the database name or a link.
- From a website that isn’t a database (for example a journal’s own site) and no DOI: end with the URL of the article.
Articles with an article number
Many online journals give each article a number instead of page numbers. Put the word Article and the number where the page range would go:
Article number
Author, A. A. (Year). Title of the article. Title of the Journal, volume(issue), Article e012345. https://doi.org/xxxx
Common mistakes
- Writing the article title in Title Case. APA wants sentence case for articles and books, title case only for journal names.
- Putting the issue number in italics. Only the volume is italic.
- Leaving out the DOI, or writing it as “doi:10.1126/…”. Use the https://doi.org/ link.
- Adding a full stop after the DOI.
- Using “and” instead of “&” in the reference list or in parenthetical citations.