How to Cite a Journal Article in Harvard Style

Quick Answer

Harvard journal article format (online, with DOI):

Author Surname, Initial(s). (Year) 'Article title', Journal Name, Volume(Issue), pp. xx-xx. Available at: https://doi.org/xx.xxxx/yyyy.

Harvard journal article format (print only):

Author Surname, Initial(s). (Year) 'Article title', Journal Name, Volume(Issue), pp. xx-xx.

Worked example (online, with DOI):

Chen, L., Wang, D. and Patel, R. (2023) 'The impact of remote work on urban transportation patterns', Journal of Urban Planning, 48(3), pp. 210-228. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02697459.2023.2198765.

In-text citations:

• One author: (Mitchell, 2019)
• Two authors: (Chen and Wang, 2023)
• Three or more authors: (Chen et al., 2023)
• Direct quote: (Chen et al., 2023, p. 215)

Three rules that catch most people out:

• Single quotes around the article title, not double. Cite Them Right uses 'single quotation marks' for article titles. Double quotes are an APA habit and a common automatic-conversion error in word processors.
• Sentence case for the article title, title case for the journal. Capitalise only the first word and proper nouns in the article title; capitalise principal words in the journal name. Do not invert these.
• Drop "Accessed:" when the article has a DOI. A DOI is a permanent identifier, so you only need "Available at: https://doi.org/..." with no access date. Add "(Accessed: ...)" only for online articles without a DOI.

Need to format dozens of references at once? Paste any DOI or article URL into the AllCitations Harvard generator and get a correctly formatted Cite Them Right reference in seconds, then export to BibTeX or RIS for Zotero, Mendeley, or EndNote.

What is "Harvard" Style for Journal Articles?

"Harvard referencing" is not a single style controlled by one body. It is a family of author-date systems used across the United Kingdom, Australia, and parts of Europe. The dominant version in UK universities is Cite Them Right (12th ed., 2022) by Richard Pears and Graham Shields, published by Bloomsbury Academic. Most UK university libraries either adopt Cite Them Right directly or publish a near-identical local variant (Anglia Ruskin, Leeds Beckett, Manchester Metropolitan, and many others).

This guide follows Cite Them Right 12th edition, which is the variant supported by the AllCitations Harvard generator. Where your university's house style differs in a small but significant way (volume formatting, the exact wording of "Available at"), we flag it explicitly in the Special Cases section.

For a comparison with the wider family of Harvard variants and a side-by-side example, see How to Cite Sources in Harvard Referencing Style.

The Cite Them Right Journal Article Template

Cite Them Right (12th ed.) treats a journal article as having nine elements, in this fixed order:

1. Author(s) - surname first, then initials
2. (Year) of publication, in parentheses
3. 'Article title' - in single quotation marks, sentence case
4. , comma after the closing quote
5. Journal Name - italicised, title case
6. , comma
7. Volume(Issue) - issue number in round brackets, no space before
8. , pp. xx-xx - page range
9. Available at: URL or DOI - only when the article was accessed online

If any element is missing (no issue number, no page range, no DOI), you skip that element rather than substituting "n.d." or "no issue". The only universal substitution is "no date" in place of the year when no publication date can be found anywhere on the source.

The result, for a fully online article, is:

Author, Initial. (Year) 'Article title', Journal Name, Volume(Issue), pp. xx-xx. Available at: https://doi.org/xxxxx.

Keep the punctuation exactly as shown. Cite Them Right is unusually strict about the comma between the closing single quote and the italicised journal name: that comma sits outside the quotation mark, not inside. This differs from US conventions and is the single most-marked-down error in UK undergraduate references.

For broader context on the author-date model and how it applies to other source types, the Harvard generator overview walks through the same template adapted to books, websites, and reports.

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Worked Examples

The eight examples below cover the situations that account for the vast majority of journal article citations students need to write. Each shows the reference list entry and the matching in-text citation.

1. Article with One Author (Online, with DOI)

The most common modern case: you found the article through Google Scholar or your library's database, and it has a DOI.

Reference list entry:

Mitchell, T.J. (2024) 'Cognitive load and decision fatigue in clinical settings', Journal of Applied Psychology, 109(3), pp. 412-428. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001145.

In-text citations:

• Parenthetical: (Mitchell, 2024)
• Narrative: Mitchell (2024) found that decision quality declined after the seventh consecutive consultation.
• Direct quote: (Mitchell, 2024, p. 419)

Two style points worth flagging. The author's initials run together with no space ("T.J." not "T. J."), which is Cite Them Right's preference. And the page range uses an unspaced en-dash-equivalent hyphen in "412-428" - Cite Them Right does not require a true en dash, and a plain hyphen is acceptable.

2. Article with Two Authors

For two authors, use "and" between the names, not an ampersand. The ampersand is an APA habit and is consistently marked wrong in Harvard.

Reference list entry:

Nguyen, P.L. and Castellano, R.J. (2023) 'Social media use and self-esteem among emerging adults: a longitudinal analysis', Developmental Psychology, 59(1), pp. 88-101. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0001456.

In-text citations:

• Parenthetical: (Nguyen and Castellano, 2023)
• Narrative: Nguyen and Castellano (2023) report that the effect peaked at age nineteen.

Note the comma after the second author's surname-initial pair before the year: "Nguyen, P.L. and Castellano, R.J. (2023)". The "and" replaces the comma between the two authors but the comma before "and" is dropped in two-author lists. With three or more authors the comma returns (see example 3).

3. Article with Three or More Authors

Cite Them Right truncates the in-text citation to "et al." from the first citation when there are three or more authors. The reference list still lists every author by name.

Reference list entry:

Whitfield, K.D., Okonkwo, A.M., Vasquez, L.R. and Park, S.H. (2022) 'The role of sleep quality in academic performance among college students', Health Psychology, 41(5), pp. 334-346. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1037/hea0001179.

In-text citations:

• Parenthetical: (Whitfield et al., 2022)
• Narrative: Whitfield et al. (2022) demonstrated a one-grade-point gap between students who slept fewer than five hours and those who slept seven or more.

In the reference list, the comma before "and Park, S.H." separates the third surname from the conjunction. This is the Oxford-comma-style rule that Cite Them Right inherits. UK universities are inconsistent about this: Anglia Ruskin Harvard drops that comma; Cite Them Right keeps it. If your faculty handbook says "Anglia Ruskin Harvard", drop the comma before "and"; otherwise keep it.

4. Article with Many Authors (Long Author Lists)

Cite Them Right lists every author by default, no matter how many. There is no truncation rule for the reference list. Some publishers (and some university house styles) truncate at twenty authors followed by "et al."; this is a deviation from Cite Them Right and you should follow your faculty's instructions if they ask for it.

Reference list entry (eleven authors):

Garcia, M., Liu, T., Andersson, K., Patel, R., Wong, K., Reynolds, P., Murphy, K., Hernandez, A., Kim, J., Park, H.J. and Lee, S. (2023) 'Genomic markers in fish populations across temperate and tropical zones', Molecular Ecology, 32(8), pp. 1842-1865. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/mec.16923.

In-text citation:

• Parenthetical: (Garcia et al., 2023)

A single "et al." replaces every author after the first in the in-text citation. Do not write "(Garcia, Liu and Andersson et al., 2023)". The "et al." stands in for everyone but the first surname.

5. Article with No DOI (Online)

When an online article has no DOI, replace the DOI with the article URL and add an access date in parentheses. The access date matters because the URL is not a permanent identifier and the page may change.

Reference list entry:

Hartley, S. (2021) 'Public engagement with synthetic biology in policy debates', Science as Culture, 30(2), pp. 245-264. Available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09505431.2020.1864321 (Accessed: 8 May 2026).

In-text citation: (Hartley, 2021)

If the article does have a DOI but the URL you have is the publisher's HTML page rather than "https://doi.org/...", convert it. Search the article on CrossRef and use the canonical DOI form. Cite Them Right prefers DOIs over URLs whenever both are available because DOIs do not break.

6. Online-First Article (No Volume or Issue Yet)

Modern journals publish articles online ahead of issue assignment. You will see "online first", "early view", or "advance access" labels. Such an article has a DOI but no volume, issue, or page range yet.

Reference list entry:

Okafor, N.B. (2026) 'Emotion regulation strategies in bilingual individuals', Cognition and Emotion, advance online publication. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2026.1234567.

In-text citation: (Okafor, 2026)

Cite Them Right allows the phrase "advance online publication" in place of the volume and pages. Once the article is assigned to an issue, update your reference. Some UK universities prefer the wording "in press" rather than "advance online publication"; both are acceptable as long as you are consistent.

7. Article with No Author (Anonymous Editorial, News Item)

Editorials, news items, and short journal pieces sometimes appear without a byline. Cite Them Right's rule is to start the reference with the article title in single quotes, not with the word "Anonymous". Use the title as the alphabetising element in the reference list and as the in-text citation.

Reference list entry:

'Funding the future of UK biomedical research' (2024) The Lancet, 403(10421), pp. 1-2. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)02564-9.

In-text citations:

• Parenthetical: ('Funding the future', 2024)
• Narrative: A 2024 editorial in The Lancet argues that...

In the in-text citation you can shorten the title to the first few significant words for readability, as shown above. Make sure the shortened form is unambiguous against the rest of your reference list.

8. Article in a Special Issue with a Named Issue Editor

Special issues have a guest editor who curates the issue but is not necessarily an author of the individual articles. You cite the article exactly as a normal article. The issue editor is not added to the reference, only the article author(s).

Reference list entry:

Adeyemi, F.O. (2025) 'Decolonising the curriculum: a case study from secondary geography', British Educational Research Journal, 51(2), pp. 412-431. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.4012.

In-text citation: (Adeyemi, 2025)

If, on the other hand, you are citing the editor's introduction to the special issue (sometimes called an editorial or a guest editorial), the editor is the author and you cite that piece directly:

Mukherjee, A. and Singh, R. (2025) 'Editorial: decolonising educational research', British Educational Research Journal, 51(2), pp. 287-291. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.4001.

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Special Cases

Articles with Article Numbers Instead of Page Ranges

Open-access journals such as PLOS ONE, Scientific Reports, PeerJ, and the Frontiers family assign each article a unique article number ("e0298451") rather than running page numbers. Use the article number where the page range would normally go, prefixed with "p." or written without "pp.".

Torres, R.A. and Kim, J.Y. (2024) 'Open-access publishing and citation equity in the social sciences', PLOS ONE, 19(2), e0298451. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0298451.

The article number replaces both the issue-page combination, so do not duplicate the volume number.

Pre-prints (medRxiv, bioRxiv, arXiv, SSRN)

A pre-print is not yet peer reviewed, so Cite Them Right treats it as a separate source type from a journal article. Use the pre-print server name as the publisher and the DOI assigned by the server.

Hosseini, A. and Yusuf, B. (2025) 'Predictors of long-COVID symptom trajectories in a UK Biobank sub-cohort', medRxiv [pre-print]. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.03.14.25323890.

If the pre-print is later published in a peer-reviewed journal, cite the journal version unless your point depends specifically on the pre-print version that was circulated earlier.

Articles in Languages Other Than English

Provide the original article title in the original language followed by an English translation in square brackets. Do not translate the journal name. Capitalisation in the original title follows the original language's rules (German nouns stay capitalised; French uses sentence case).

Morales, F.J. (2020) 'Efectos del bilingualismo en la memoria de trabajo' [Effects of bilingualism on working memory], Revista de Psicologia, 38(2), pp. 45-62. Available at: https://doi.org/10.18800/psico.202002.003.

For articles in non-Roman scripts (Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian), transliterate the title using a recognised romanisation system and provide the English translation in brackets. Cite Them Right does not prescribe a specific romanisation standard, but pinyin for Chinese and Hepburn for Japanese are the conventional choices.

Retracted Articles

When a published article has been retracted, append "(Retracted)" after the article title in single quotes. This signals to your reader that the source is no longer valid for the claim it originally made.

Lee, S. and Park, H.J. (2023) 'Cellular respiration in marine algae (Retracted)', Journal of Cell Biology, 222(4), e202301045. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1083/jcb.202301045.

Always check whether an article has been retracted before relying on its findings. The Retraction Watch database and the journal's own website both flag retractions clearly. Citing a retracted paper without acknowledging the retraction is one of the easier ways to lose marks in a literature review.

Articles Accessed Through a Subscription Database

Cite Them Right wants the source itself, not the database you used to find it. Do not write "Retrieved from EBSCOhost", "Available at: ProQuest", or similar. The reference is the same whether you found the article through your library's subscription, through Google Scholar, or by walking into the British Library and reading the print copy. Use the DOI; if there is no DOI, use the publisher's URL, not the database's URL (database URLs require institutional login and break for readers without it).

Issues with Multiple Parts (e.g., 12(3) Pt. 2)

Some journals split a single issue into parts. Place the part number after the issue, separated by a comma:

Brennan, P. (2019) 'Comparative phonology of Cumbric and Old Welsh', Transactions of the Philological Society, 117(2), Pt. 2, pp. 245-271. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968X.12172.

This is uncommon in modern publishing but appears in older volumes and some humanities journals.

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Cite Them Right vs. Other UK Harvard Variants

If your university tells you to follow Harvard but does not specify Cite Them Right, the rules below show where the major UK variants diverge. None of these differences is large; many markers will not penalise you for using Cite Them Right when a slight variant is preferred. But if your faculty handbook explicitly references one of these, follow it.

The AllCitations Harvard generator outputs Cite Them Right by default. If your faculty uses a stricter local variant, you can copy the generated output and apply the small differences manually.

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Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Using double quotation marks around the article title. Cite Them Right uses single quotation marks. Word processors often auto-convert single quotes to "smart" double quotes; check your reference list output before submission and convert back if your software has changed them.

Putting the comma inside the closing quote. UK punctuation places the comma outside the closing quotation mark. Write 'Article title', not 'Article title,'. This is the opposite of US convention and a frequent slip in markers' favourite gotcha lists.

Using "&" instead of "and". Harvard always uses "and" between authors, both in the reference list and in-text citations. The ampersand is an APA convention and converts to a marked error in Harvard.

Including the journal name in sentence case. The article title is in sentence case ("Cognitive load and decision fatigue"); the journal name is in title case ("Journal of Applied Psychology"). Many students mix these up.

Forgetting the issue number. Cite Them Right requires both volume and issue: "48(3)", not just "48". Some journals do not have separate issues (only volumes); in that case, drop the parentheses entirely and just write the volume number.

Adding "Retrieved from" before the URL. That phrase is APA 6 (and was dropped from APA 7). Harvard never used it. Use "Available at:" followed by the URL or DOI.

Including an access date for DOI'd articles. A DOI is a permanent identifier, so no access date is needed. The "(Accessed: ...)" parenthetical applies only when you cite a URL that might change.

Using "et al." in the reference list. Cite Them Right lists every author in the reference list, regardless of count. The "et al." abbreviation appears in in-text citations only.

Truncating the page range to a single number when the article is one page long. Even for a one-page editorial, write "pp. 1-1" if the journal numbers it that way, or use "p. 1" with a single page indicator. Do not write "p. 1-1".

Writing "no date" with capital letters or in italics. When no publication date is available anywhere on the source, use "no date" in lowercase plain text. Do not write "No Date" or "n.d." (the abbreviation is APA, not Harvard).

Mixing Harvard variants within a single document. Pick Cite Them Right or your university's local variant and stick to it for the whole document. Do not switch between "Available at:" and "Available from:" or between "Accessed: 8 May 2026" and "[Accessed 8 May 2026]" within the same reference list.

For broader rules of thumb that apply to every Harvard source type, see How to Cite Sources in Harvard Referencing Style.

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Quick-Reference Table

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Tools and Resources

• AllCitations Harvard Generator: Paste any DOI, PubMed URL, or article URL and generate a correctly formatted Cite Them Right reference. Exports BibTeX or RIS for use in Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote, and other reference managers.
• Cite Them Right Online (Bloomsbury): The publisher's official subscription database with the full text of the 12th edition and detailed source-by-source examples. Most UK universities subscribe.
• CrossRef: Search any article by title or author to find the canonical DOI. If your reference manager produced a publisher URL rather than a DOI, CrossRef will convert it.
• Retraction Watch Database: Check whether an article has been retracted before relying on its findings.

You can browse every citation style supported by AllCitations on our citation styles page.

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Related Citation Guides

• How to Cite Sources in Harvard Referencing Style
• How to Cite a Journal Article in APA 7
• How to Cite a Journal Article in MLA 9
• How to Cite a Journal Article in CSE Style
• How to Cite in Chicago Author-Date Style

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