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Proper Techniques To Cite Journal Articles In MLA Format Using Different Sources

Published by at January 22nd, 2025 , Revised On January 22, 2025

Citations are the most important element of research studies as the studies can not be considered research without the use of relevant sources in the text of the prose. So anyone, whether from medical sciences, liberal arts or humanities, economics, finance, or any field of study, wants to write a research study.

Needs to learn different citation styles that are being used by the experts and how to use them in order to cite journal articles in MLA format or any other format required by the publication journal or the research committee of your institution.

If you, too, are struggling to write a literature review having in-text citations or works cited listed according to the proper format for your dissertation. Consult the steps outlined below and make your study perfect according to the requirements.

What is a Journal Article?

Before moving on to learn how to cite an article in a journal using MLA format, you need to understand what a journal article is if you are new to the research world. A journal article is a piece of study that is of some value to the academics and the practitioners of the field associated with it.

Journal articles are usually written by researchers and can be written by journalists or professionals of different fields overlapping with academia. These are first submitted by the authors to the journal editorial team and then peer-reviewed by the research committee that decides whether it is acceptable to be published or not in the journal and then gets published or gets a unique DOI number.

What is an Academic Journal?

An academic journal is a periodical managed by research organisations and universities that publish findings of the researchers available in the research paper or a journal article in a specific field of knowledge.

These scholarly journals usually have a peer review committee that makes sure to scrutinise every prose submitted to the journal for publication and decides whether it reflects expertise about the subject or topic being discussed or not. The aim of scholarly journals like JSTOR, Science Direct, and so on is to spread only expert knowledge about a certain topic to help readers learn well-researched information or results conducted by the researchers.

Journals are not like ordinary magazines or newspapers that cover a broad range of topics written in easy-to-read manners for the audience. These are highly authoritative in the sense that they only publish expert studies written in usually complex language, including jargon or field-related terms. In short, academic journals contain studies written by the expert researchers for the expert readers.

Importance of Peer-Reviewed Academic Journals

Peer-reviewed academic journals have significant importance in the research world because they not only include research papers written by experts but also the studies written from the pen of experts passed through the eyes of experts available in the peer-reviewed committee of the scholarly journal.

This means the piece of information a reader is going to receive after scrolling through the database of the journal is mostly accurate and testified by the experts in the field. The review committee members make sure to scrutinise every piece of prose submitted for publication to ensure the findings presented match the research methodology or variable used to conduct research.

It means the prose that is submitted to any peer-reviewed journal is verified by the experts in that field and makes the paper valuable.

How to Find Journals Online?

Doing scholarly research to write studies like SCI Paper and so on, you can not use ordinary search engines like Bing, Google, and so on. You need to use a dedicated database that can lead you to relevant research studies that you can use in the citation of your study.

If you are using Google to find relevant articles for your medical-related study, it will show you popular results like blogs first instead of research papers, dissertations, conference papers, and similar research studies written by experts that can be of some value to you as you can easily cite them in your study.

You need to use a search box of the scholarly database that can take you to a large number of relevant articles published in the journals.

Some popular Academic Journals are listed below for the researchers of different academic disciplines.

If you are looking for subject-specific academic databases then you can consider the below ones as well to find relevant dissertations papers to add references to your prose.

  • PubMed Central – To find biomedical and life sciences-related papers.
  • HeinOnline – To find law-related studies
  • IEEE  – To find computation sciences-related studies

 

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How to Use MLA Style in Text Citation for Journal Articles?

When writing a literature review of your prose, you are required to add relevant pieces of information that validate your point of view between the lines. Researchers use books, articles, quotes, video messages, statistics, surveys, and different sources to add information to their essays.

There are three ways that most of the researchers from different academic disciplines use to use relevant information in their own documents. We have listed them below to help you understand clearly and replicate while writing.

  • By Paraphrasing: A researcher can take the particular pieces of information from a single or more than one paragraph of the article, book, and so on, and rewrite that piece in its own words.
  • By Summarising: You can take the whole article or chapter of the book as a reference and write a broad summary of that cited information in your own words.
  • By Exactly Quoting: The best way to cite quotes from personalities is to repeat the exact words in the content by closing the whole statement between the quotation marks.

Now, you need to properly cite the source in the works cited list or use in-text citations against the words used as supporting sentences from the above-mentioned or other sources to avoid plagiarism and give the due credit to the real author.

But the question here is how to cite an article in a journal using MLA format to meet the publication standards or keep the style consistency maintained throughout the study. We have outlined below a comprehensive guide for you to learn how to cite journal articles in MLA format.

In-Text Citations for Journal Articles

It is important to add citations in your text as it enhances the credibility of your study. Adding in-text citations in your prose is necessary as it makes the readers alert that these words that you are reading are not yours but of others.

The use of parentheses that include the words of citation at the end of a sentence distinguishes it from the author’s words in the study. In-text citations are usually shortened in sentences or have only chunks of information that readers can easily find the source of them in the works cited page at the end of the prose.

MLA Style Format Used For In-Text Citations

After scrolling through the MLA Handbook pages 227-228, we have found the below points that need to be followed for adding in-text citations in your journal articles.

  • Name of the author or authors in case of more than one author
  • If there is no name of the author written, then you can add a shortened version of the study title.
  • Page number from which you are selecting information for citation.
  • Several online sources do not have a page number placed on the document, but academic journals always have.

Keep in mind that if you have once used the name of the author in the text, then there is no need to repeat it at the end of parentheses. Also, don’t separate the authors’ name or page number of the article with a comma.

How To Cite Journal Articles In MLA Format In The Works Cited Page?

A works cited page is a list of sources used in the article by the researcher or researchers in case of more than one author. It is placed at the end of the study and most of the time it is the last page of the paper.

It is used to share full references of the in-text citations used in the content of the study to help readers find more information about the topic by accessing these citations. Below is the MLA format to follow for adding in-text citation sources on the works cited page.

  • Name of the author: if there are more than three authors of the study, then you can use “et al.” after the name of the first author to save space.
  • Title of the study
  • Title of the journal (Container) in which the study is published
  • Volume and issue number
  • Date of paper publication
  • Page number from which data is cited
  • Database through which journal is accessed (2nd Container)
  • DOI, permalink, or URL of the publication
  • Date of access on which article is being read and cited (It is supplemental, but it can be added to the works cited list for studies that have no publication date listed)

What Are MLA Containers?

According to the official handbook of MLA discusses what’s new or different in MLA 9th edition. It has introduced a new term, ‘containers’, for citing references, which was previously introduced in the MLA 8th edition on page 134.

According to the new terminology periodicals similar to journals available online or offline can be considered as “containers” because they are storing the articles that are part of a larger whole database. These database containers hold the source of the articles that researchers use for citations and makes the identification process easy.

According to the guidelines of MLA handbook, the title of the first container, name of journal, would be printed in italics and follows the article name from which citation is made. If the student is accessing the journal through a third party database, then the database form would be considered as the second container and its title would be printed in italics too.

What Are Digital Object Identifiers (DOI)?

Adding DOI against your citation sources makes your study more credible and authentic as the website or database from which you have taken an article or study for data referencing can not change the location or specifications of it. DOI stands for Digital Object Identifier, used to permanently identify an article or a document and link to it on the website.

There are chances that a website or database may change the name of the document which you have cited and there occurred some instances that students faced such issues that their citations can not be tracked due to change of name or location by the directories from which they have taken them.

Make sure to place DOI in place of the URLs you have used in the citations list to help readers any time locate the document from your citations. You just need to add “https://www.doi.org/” before the DOI number of your citation source, and your work is done. You can also use permalinks to make the sources identifiable.

Permalinks are more stable as compared to URLs because these links are stable, and the publishers promise not to change them.

Citing Articles in MLA Format Using Journal Databases

Here are citation examples of articles from databases using a citation format according to the MLA 9th latest edition that you can also follow for your study as well.

Journal Article Citation Example With One Author

Format For Works Cited Page

Format

Author SurName, First Name. “Title of Article.” Journal Title, vol. #, issue #, publication date, page number(s). Database Title, DOI (if available) or URL (without https://) or Permalink. Access Date (supplemental).

Example

Ryan, Janette. “Teaching and learning for international students: Towards a transcultural approach.” Teachers and Teaching, vol. 17, no. 6, 26 Oct. 2011, pp. 631–648, https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2011.625138.

Format For In-Text Citation

Example

This analysis points to a changing pattern of responses that are tied more closely to discourses of globalisation and internationalisation. (Ryan 633)

Journal Article Citation Example With Two Authors

Format For Works Cited Page

Format

1st Author Surname, First Name, and Second Author First Name Last Name. “Title of Article.” Journal Title, vol. #, issue #, publication date, page number(s). Database Title, DOI (if available) or, URL (without https://) or Permalink. Access Date (supplemental).

Example

Shifton, Jeremy J. “How confession characteristics impact juror perceptions of evidence in criminal trials.” Behavioral Sciences & the Law 37.1 (2019): 90-108.

Format For In-Text Citation

Example

Results showed that confessions arising from lengthy interrogations were perceived to be weaker than those arising from short interrogations. (Shifton and Jeremy 98)

Journal Article Citation Example With Three Or More Authors

Format For Works Cited Page

Format

1st Author Last Name, First Name, et al. “Title of Article.” Journal Title, vol. #, issue #, publication date, page number(s). Database Title, DOI (if available), URL (without https://), or Permalink. Access Date (supplemental).

Example

Dietz, Thomas, Rachael L. Shwom, and Cameron T. Whitley. “Climate change and society.” Annual Review of Sociology 46.1 (2020): 135-158.

Format For In-Text Citation

Example

Sociology is also poised to make important contributions to the study of climate justice across multiple lines of stratification, including race, class, gender, Indigenous identity, sexuality and queerness, and disability, and to articulate the effects of climate change on our relationship to nonhuman species. (Dietz et al. 149).

Citing Articles in MLA Format Using Print Sources

If you need to cite journal articles in MLA format from print sources, less information is needed than for online sources. Below is a list of elements you need to write while adding citations to the study.

  • Name of the author or authors in case of more than two authors. If there are more than three authors then only use the first authors’ name or add “et al.” after that.
  • Title of the article in quotation marks.
  • Name of the journal in italics
  • Volume and issue number of the journal
  • Years of publication
  • Page number or numbers

Format For Works Cited Page

Format

Author Last Name, First Name. “Article Title.” Journal Title, vol. #, issue #, publication date, page numbers.

Example

Mahendra, Muhammad Yusril Ihza, and Dina Amelia. “Moral Values Analysis in the Fault in Our Stars Novel By John Green.” Linguistics and Literature Journal 1.2 (2020): 55-61.

Format For In-Text Citation

Format

(Author’s SurName page number)

(First Author’s SurName and Second Author’s SurName page number)

(First Author’s SurName et al. page number)

Example

(Mahendra et al. 57)

Frequently Asked Questions

According to the MLA handbook, there is no need to italicise the title of the article, but placing quotation marks is necessary.

You can format a DOI in MLA style by making it a link, including “https://doi.org/” at the start, and then use the unique numerical code of the article.

You can use journal articles, website studies, books, case studies, surveys, quotes, and whatever you find valuable to use as in-text citations in your article.

About Alvin Nicolas

Avatar for Alvin NicolasNicolas has a master's degree in literature and a PhD degree in statistics. He is a content manager at ResearchProspect. He loves to write, cook and run. Nicolas is passionate about helping students at all levels.