Printed Journal Article (three or more authors)
You may need to consult more than one section to accurately represent the source used (eg. number of authors and source descriptions)
Format for in-text citation
In-text citation example
Use the name of the first author plus et al. in every citation, unless doing so creates ambiguity, in which case include as many authors as are required to distinguish between citations:
Lindgren et al. (2009) discuss that…
OR
…was discussed (Lindgren et al., 2009).
If there are similar authors avoid ambiguity by listing as many as required
Example:
(Lawrence, Felson, Helmick, & Arnold, 2007)
(Lawrence, Felson, Helmick, & Dieppe, 2007)
Subsequent use:
Lindgren et al. (2009) mention that…
OR
…was mentioned (Lindgren et al., 2009).
OR
Lindgren et al. (2009) assert that "more equal gender representation will increase policy congruence" (p. 3).
Format for reference list
Elements, punctuation & capitalisation
Author, A. A., Author, B. B., Author, C. C., & Author, D. D. (Year of publication). Title of article. Name of Publication, Volume(issue), Page numbers.
Reference list example
Lindgren, K., Inkinen, M., & Widmalm, S. (2009). Who knows best what the people want: Women or men? Comparative Political Studies, 42(2), 31–55.
For up to twenty authors:
Raj, S., Hussain, F., Husein, Z., Torosdagli, N., Turgut, D., Deo, N., Pattanaik, S., Chung-Che, C., & Jha, S. K. (2017). A theorem proving approach for automatically synthesizing visualizations of flow cytometry data. BMC Bioinformatics, 18, 39–49. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-017-1662-4
For twenty-one or more authors:
Venter, J. C., Adams, M. D., Myers, E. W., Li, P. W., Mural, R. J., Sutton, G. G., Smith, H. O., Yandell, M., Evans, C. A., Holt, R. A., Gocayne, J. D., Amanatides, P., Ballew, R. M., Huson, D. H., Wortman, J. R., Zhang, Q., Kodira, C. D., Zheng, X. H., Chen, L., … Zhu, X. (2001). The sequence of the human genome. Science, 291(5507), 1304–1351. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1058040
Make sure you read the style notes below
In-text citation style notes
- In the text, cite the surname of the first author followed by et al. and the year (the year only needed if the reference has not already appeared in the same paragraph).
Reference list style notes
- In the reference list, give names and initials for up to and including 20 authors.
In the reference list, if there are 21 more authors, give the names of the first 19, insert three ellipses, and then add the last name. - Use an ampersand (&) to join the last authors’ names in the reference list or in brackets, not and (but use and in the narrative text).
- Italicise the name of the journal/publication and volume number.
- Capitalise the first and all major words of the publication name. Give the publication name in full, e.g., Journal of Immunology, not J Immunol.
- Capitalise the article title as follows: first word of title and subtitle, and proper names and proper adjectives, e.g., Still moving: Between cinema and photography.
- Give the volume number of journals, magazines and newsletters.
- When each journal issue starts on page 1, include the issue number in parentheses immediately (no space) after the volume number.
- If a journal or newsletter does not use volume numbers, include the month or season, or other designation, with the year, e.g., (2008, May).
- Give inclusive page numbers.
- Include both article title and subtitle, regardless of length.
- For supplementary material, include a description of the content in brackets after the title, e.g., [Special issue], [Special section].
Explore resources to help with reference management and enable you to effectively integrate and cite sources into your writing and assessment tasks.