How to Cite a Journal Article in Harvard Style (Formats + Worked Examples)

Journal articles carry the evidence in most assignments, and they are the most detailed Harvard format students meet. An article lives inside a larger publication, so the entry carries two titles — the article's and the journal's — plus the volume and issue that locate it and the page range it runs across. Students rarely lose marks on the idea of the format; they lose them on predictable details: italics on the wrong title, a missing page range, the database cited as if it wrote the paper.

Two ground rules before the formats. First, Harvard is a family of styles, not a single rulebook: this guide follows Cite Them Right Harvard, the variant most UK and Australian institutions adopt, and your university's own guide always wins where the two differ. Second, reference the version you actually used — if you read the article online, use the online format, even if a print edition exists. This article sits in our referencing cluster alongside the Harvard referencing mistakes guide and the companion guide to referencing a website in Harvard style.

The two formats, element by element

Some online journals publish continuously and give an article number instead of a page range. In that case the article number takes the place of pp. xx–xx, as worked example 5 below shows.

In-text citations

The in-text citation is only ever the author, the year, and — when you point at a specific passage — the page. Everything else lives in the reference list.

• One author: (Osei, 2026), or Osei (2026) found that…
• Two authors: name both, every time — (Hattie and Timperley, 2007).
• Three or more authors: first author plus et al. from the first citation onward — (Culloty et al., 2019).
• Direct quotation: the quote takes the page it sits on: "Feedback is information about how we are doing in our efforts to reach a goal" (Hattie and Timperley, 2007, p. 102). Use p. for one page and pp. for a span: (Hattie and Timperley, 2007, pp. 102–103).
• A point taken from one specific page: university guides recommend the page number for a paraphrase tied to a particular passage too — it costs nothing and lets your marker find the passage in seconds. An uncited paraphrase, with or without a page, is the costliest error in our guide to paraphrasing without plagiarising.
• Same author, same year: distinguish the articles with letters — (Rahman, 2026a) and (Rahman, 2026b) — and keep the same letters in the reference list.

Five worked examples

1. A print journal article

The plain case, read on paper: no web elements at all. Note the shape — article title in single quotes and sentence case, journal in italics, then volume(issue) and the full page range.

2. An online article with a DOI (and six authors)

Two lessons in one entry. The list names all six authors — while in your text the same article is simply (Culloty et al., 2019). And because the DOI is given, no access date follows it: the DOI is permanent, so Cite Them Right treats it as enough.

3. An online article with no DOI

No DOI means the URL does the locating, and because a URL can move, the access date is required. Give the article's own page, not the journal's homepage or a search-results link.

4. A two-author article, quoted in the text

The pair students most often split wrongly: the list carries the article's full page range (pp. 81–112); the in-text citation carries only the page quoted (p. 102). The two numbers do different jobs.

5. An article number instead of pages

Continuously published journals number articles rather than paging them. Write "article" plus the number where the page range would go, and cite it in text as (Osei, 2026) — if you quote, point to the section or paragraph instead of a page.

The mistakes that cost marks

• Italics on the article title. The single most common journal error: the article title takes single quotes, the journal title takes the italics. It is mistake 8 in our Harvard mistakes bank, and it is wrong in every Harvard variant.
• The database as the source. JSTOR, EBSCO and Google Scholar are shelves, not authors. Cite the article; the entry names the journal, never the platform you found it on, and the DOI replaces any database link.
• A page range that is only the page you used. The list entry gives the article's whole range — first page to last — even if you quoted from one page only.
• Et al. in the reference list. The shortcut belongs in the text. In the list, every author is named in full, in the article's own order.
• Access date with a DOI — or missing without one. The two halves of the rule travel together: DOI given, no access date needed; URL only, access date required. Mixing them up signals a format copied from somewhere else.
• Referencing the version you did not read. A print-format entry for an article you read as an online PDF — reference what was in front of you.

The 60-second journal check

• Every author named in the list, in the article's order — and et al. nowhere in the list?
• Article title in single quotes and sentence case; journal title in italics?
• Volume (and issue, if there is one) present, with the article's full page range — or its article number?
• Online article: DOI link used if one exists; if not, the article's URL plus today's access date?
• In text, quotes carry their page number, and three-plus-author works are et al. from the first mention?
• Every (Author, Year) in your text matched by exactly one entry in the list — checked in both directions?

Run this check over the journal entries already in your draft and most lists clean up in minutes. If referencing is eating hours that belong to the writing itself, our assignment support service checks reference lists against your institution's Harvard variant and flags every entry that would lose marks — before your marker sees it.

Saving the first page of a journal PDF for your records? Shrink a screenshot of it to a tidy, portal-friendly size with the free image compressor.