What is the Harvard format for a journal article?

Surname, Initials. (Year) Title of article, Title of Journal in italics, volume(issue), page range. For example: Walsh, K. (2025) Housing policy after the crash, Irish Journal of Sociology, 33(2), pp. 145-167.

What is in italics, the article or the journal?

The journal. The article title stays in plain text. The rule across Harvard is that the container is italic and the part inside it is not, which is why a book title is italic but a chapter title is not.

Where does the DOI go?

At the very end, written as a full link: doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0791603525123456. A DOI is more stable than a journal URL, so use it whenever the article has one, and you do not need an accessed date with it.

What if there is no issue number?

Some journals number continuously through a volume and have no issues. Just leave it out: Irish Journal of Sociology, 33, pp. 145-167. Do not invent an issue number or write n/a.

How do I reference an article with no page numbers?

Online-only journals often number articles instead of pages. Use the article number if there is one, or give the DOI and nothing else. For an in-text quote, point at a paragraph or section rather than a page.

What about an article in press?

Write (in press) where the year goes, and leave out volume, issue and pages, because they do not exist yet. Add the DOI if the publisher has issued one.

Do I include the database I found it in?

No. JSTOR, ScienceDirect and your library discovery tool are how you reached the article, not where it was published. Reference the journal and let the DOI do the finding.

How to Reference a Journal Article in Harvard Style

Volume, issue, pages and DOI, in that order, with the journal in italics and the article in plain text. Here is the pattern and the awkward cases.

The basic pattern

Surname, Initials. (Year) Title of article, Title of Journal, volume(issue), pp. page range.

Walsh, K. (2025) Housing policy after the crash, Irish Journal of Sociology, 33(2), pp. 145–167.

In the text: (Walsh, 2025).

The part everyone gets backwards

The journal is italic. The article title is not. It feels wrong because the article is the thing you read, but the logic is consistent across Harvard: the container is italic, the piece inside it is plain. Book italic, chapter plain. Journal italic, article plain.

Journal titles keep their capital letters, because that is the publication’s name. Article titles do not: only the first word and proper nouns.

With a DOI

A DOI is a permanent address. Put it last, as a full link, and skip the accessed date, because a DOI does not rot the way a URL does.

Ní Cheallaigh, M. and Byrne, D. (2024) Teacher retention in rural schools, Irish Educational Studies, 43(1), pp. 22–41. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/03323315.2024.1234567

Online with no DOI

Then it behaves like a web page: give the URL and the date you read it.

Fitzgerald, L. (2026) Coastal erosion on the Wild Atlantic Way, Irish Geography, 59(1). Available at: https://www.irishgeography.ie/index.php/irishgeography/article/view/1523 (Accessed: 28 August 2026).

No issue number

Plenty of journals number pages straight through a volume and never use issues. Leave the brackets out entirely rather than writing n/a.

Moore, T. (2025) Peatland restoration and carbon, Biology and Environment, 125, pp. 3–19.

Article numbers instead of pages

Common in open-access journals. Use whatever the publisher gives you.

Osei, A. (2026) Machine learning in flood forecasting, Journal of Hydrology Open, 12, article 100487. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hydroa.2026.100487

With no pages you cannot give one when quoting. Cite the section: (Osei, 2026, Methods).

In press

Accepted but not yet published. The year is replaced, not guessed.

Delaney, R. (in press) Rent pressure zones and supply, Economic and Social Review.

In the text: (Delaney, in press).

A preprint

Say what it is, so your reader knows it has not been peer reviewed.

Kelly, J. (2026) Antibiotic resistance in Irish dairy herds. bioRxiv preprint. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2026.02.14.580123

Quoting from an article

Page in the in-text citation, never in the reference list: (Walsh, 2025, p. 152). The reference list entry already carries the full page range of the article, which is a different thing: it tells the reader where the article sits in the journal.

Do not reference the database

JSTOR, ScienceDirect, EBSCO and your library search are routes, not publishers. Nobody cites the road they drove on. Reference the journal and give the DOI.

How to reference a journal article in Harvard style