Citing articles in writing is important to show readers that you understand the material you have read and that your research is based on reliable sources. It also helps you make the most of your resources and avoid plagiarism.
The best way to cite articles is to include the author’s name in your writing, using an in-text citation or the parenthetical reference. You can also cite articles by putting the source’s title in a signal phrase, if it has no page numbers or obvious subdivisions (such as paragraphs). In the case of a direct quote, use parentheses to identify the place and the author of the quote in the text.
APA style requires that you include the following information for each citation: author last name, first name; year of publication in brackets; journal name in italics; volume and issue number; page numbers in parentheses after the article title. You may also include a DOI if the journal uses it, or a URL if the source has an online version that you can access directly.
Books: If a book is available, you should list the name of the author, then the title of the book, and finally the place where it was published, and indicate the publisher on the title page if it has one. For book chapters, you should follow the same process except that you list the chapter’s name in the same order as a section of a journal or an essay, and you indicate the chapter’s title and the publisher on the table of contents.
Scientific articles: If you are citing an article from a scholarly journal, you should provide the name of the author and the year of publication in brackets, and the name of the journal in italics; you must also provide the volume and issue number. You should include the date when you accessed the article; if you have an electronic copy, you must provide the DOI or URL.
Periodicals: If you are citing an article from an academic periodical, you should include the title of the work, in italics for books, plays, and films; in quotation marks for articles and poems, and in italics and in quotation marks for short stories or essays. You should also provide the title of the periodical, and the name of the editor or authors if there are more than one.
Other types of materials:
If you are citing a work that is not available in print, such as a website or an email message, include the source’s date, name of the author and the title of the material (in italics for books, plays, or films; in quotation marks for articles and poems, or in quotation marks and italics for short stories or essays), and then the journal or magazine, the number of the issue, and the pages. You can also include the publisher if you have a copy of the journal or magazine in which the article appeared.
