How to cite a journal article depends entirely on the citation style your discipline or target journal uses. The same paper is formatted differently in APA, Vancouver, and AMA, and getting the details wrong is a common reason manuscripts are returned for correction. The good news is that every journal citation draws on the same underlying information; once you have collected it, applying any style is mechanical.
This guide shows the journal article citation for one example paper in all three major styles, then covers the edge cases that cause the most confusion: missing DOIs, no named author, and online-only articles.
The Information Every Citation Needs
Before formatting, gather these elements from the article's first page or its database record:
- Authors (surnames and initials, in the order listed)
- Year of publication
- Article title
- Journal title (full and abbreviated)
- Volume, issue, and page range
- DOI (digital object identifier), if one exists
The single most reliable source for all of this is the article's own record in PubMed or the publisher's site, not a secondhand reference. Transcription errors, especially in the DOI, are easy to introduce and look careless, so copy and paste rather than retype.