Citing and referencing: Journal articles

Include the following bulleted elements for journal articles in your reference list.

• Author surname and initials are not separated by any punctuation. Include all author names unless there are more than 6, in which case only name the first 3 followed by "et al" - see the Manual of Style for rules around hyphenated names or names with prefixes in Chapter 3.8

Example: 2.     Evangelopoulos DS, Tobel MV, Cholewa D, et al. Impact of Lodox Statscan on radiation dose and screening time in paediatric trauma patients. Eur J Pediatr Surg. 2010;20(6):382-386. doi:10.1055/s-0030-1261941

• Include the title of the article, and subtitle if present. Only the first word of the article title and words that normally begin with a capital letter is capitalised. Don't capitalise the first letter after a colon
• Abbreviate and italicise the name of the journal (use the National Library of Medicine's (NLM) catalog). Do not make up your own abbreviations. If the journal is not in the catalog, use the full title
• Year. If the article is published online early (before it's been assigned to a journal issue) include Published online month and day, year.

Example: 3.     Murray CJL. Maximizing antiretroviral therapy in developing countries: the dual challenge of efficiency and quality. JAMA. Published online December 1, 2014. doi:10.1001/jama.2014.16376

• Volume
• Issue
• Part of supplement number if appropriate
• Page number or another locator
• DOI (Digital Object Identifier), if present

Example: 4.     Maloney S, Nicklen P, Rivers G, et al. A cost-effectiveness analysis of blended versus face-to-face delivery of evidence-based medicine to medical students. J Med Internet Res. 2015;17(7):e182. doi:10.2196/jmir.4346

Example: 5.     Chapman E, García Diéguez M. Radiotherapy for malignant pleural mesothelioma. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2006;(3):CD003880. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD003880.pub4 

Online journal articles: Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) and Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) 

Many journal articles published online have a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). Include DOIs in your reference list if they exist, as they are more stable than a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). DOIs sometimes take the form of a URL. If so, you don’t need to include the HTTP, etc., start at doi:10.xxx (etc). If there is no DOI, include the URL instead and the date accessed. Do not add a full stop to DOIs or URLs.

With a DOI: 

Example: 6.     Gusenbauer M, Haddaway NR. What every researcher should know about searching – clarified concepts, search advice, and an agenda to improve finding in academia. Res Synth Methods. 2021;12(2):136-147. doi:10.1002/jrsm.1457

Without a DOI:

Example: 7.     Gusenbauer M, Haddaway NR. What every researcher should know about searching – clarified concepts, search advice, and an agenda to improve finding in academia. Res Synth Methods. 2021;12(2):136-147. Accessed June 8, 2022. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jrsm.1457

Published early online

Increasingly, journals publish articles online before being allocated to a particular issue or volume. Terms you may come across include 'online early', 'online first', or 'advance online publication'. 'Forthcoming' usually means the article has been accepted for publication. The term 'in press' is generally no longer used. Section 3.11.4 explains more about early online journal articles

Occasionally, you may want to cite other versions of articles that you've found, usually via search engines like Google or Google Scholar. Researchers may opt to make their articles openly accessible online via repositories like arXiv, platforms like ResearchGate, or other servers. Pre-prints, post-prints, or author manuscripts are common terms, but always investigate whether a final published version or 'version of record' exists and use it instead. Otherwise, indicate the version you are citing.

Example: 8.     Nnama-Okechukwu C, McLaughlin H, Okoye U, et al. Indigenous knowledge and social work education in Nigeria: challenges and need for sustainable development. Int Soc Work. Published online May 25, 2022. doi:10.1177/00208728221098511

Example: 9.     Awaya N, Ma L. Tree boosting for learning probability measures. arXiv. Preprint posted online
June 7, 2022. doi:arxiv:2101.11083