How to Cite a Journal Article in APSA Style

To cite a journal article in APSA style, list the author, the year, the article title in quotation marks, the italicized journal title, the volume number, the issue number in parentheses, a colon, and the page range. The pattern looks like this:

Format:

Last Name, First Name. Year. "Title of Article." Title of Journal Volume (Issue): page range.

Worked example (from the APSA manual itself):

Aldrich, John H. 1980. "A Dynamic Model of Presidential Nomination Campaigns." American Political Science Review 74 (3): 651–69.

In-text citation: (Aldrich 1980) or, with a page reference, (Aldrich 1980, 655)

The rest of this guide walks through each element, the in-text rules, and the cases that trip people up: multiple authors, missing issue numbers, DOIs, forthcoming articles, magazines, book reviews, and articles with no author at all.

The Official APSA Journal Article Format

The governing document is the American Political Science Association's Style Manual for Political Science, revised 2018 edition (the latest revision is dated December 2023), available free on the APSA website. The manual is built on the 17th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style and uses Chicago's author-date system, keying each of its rules to a Chicago paragraph number. For journal articles, the core rule is Chicago's 14.165, and the manual lists these elements, in order, taken from the periodical's front matter:

1. Full name of the author(s), or the editors or translators, or the institution standing in for one if no person is named.
2. Year of publication.
3. Full title of the article, including the subtitle if there is one.
4. Title of the periodical.
5. Volume number.
6. Issue number.
7. Page range of the article.
8. DOI, URL, or database name, if the article was read online.

Element by element, here is what the manual asks for:

• Author, first name inverted. Only the first author's name is reversed (Aldrich, John H.). Additional authors appear in normal order, separated by commas, with "and" before the final name. Never an ampersand.
• Year as its own sentence. The year of publication follows the author, closed with a period. If the journal issue spans two years, use the year printed on the issue you read.
• Article title in quotation marks, headline capitalization. Article titles are set in roman type inside quotation marks (Chicago 14.169), and APSA capitalizes them headline-style even when the journal printed the title in sentence case. This is the exact opposite of the APA habit, so a reference list converted from APA is usually wrong here.
• Journal title in italics, in full. Give the complete periodical name, excluding an initial "the" (14.170). American Political Science Review stays spelled out; APSA does not abbreviate journal titles the way Vancouver or IEEE do.
• Volume, then issue in parentheses. The volume number follows the journal title in roman type with no punctuation between them. The issue number sits in parentheses after the volume (14.171). Both are Arabic numerals.
• Colon, space, page range. A colon follows the closing parenthesis, then a space, then the first and last pages of the article as an inclusive range: 651–69. APSA follows Chicago's compressed style for ranges, repeating only the digits that change, and omits "p." and "pp." everywhere (14.151).
• The word "In" never appears. "In" belongs to book chapters in APSA style; with periodicals the article title runs straight into the journal title.

Two structural notes complete the picture. If no issue number exists, the month or season takes its place in the parentheses (14.171). And when the article has been accepted for publication and has not yet appeared, the word "Forthcoming" replaces the year (14.146, 14.172); more on that under Special Cases.

In-Text Citations for Journal Articles

APSA citations are parenthetical: the author's last name and the year, with no comma between them. A page reference follows the year after a comma. From the manual's own examples:

(Jentleson 2015, 12–14) (Fraser 1989, 304, 308)

Page or chapter numbers are required for direct quotes and recommended whenever you point to specific data or a specific idea. The parenthetical cites the page you actually used; the reference list entry carries the article's full range.

If you name the author in your sentence, the year still follows in parentheses, even when the name is possessive:

Aldrich (1980) modeled nomination campaigns as sequential contests. Trish (1988) sharply disagrees.

The rules that catch journal articles most often:

• Two or three authors: name them all, every time. (Dodd and Oppenheimer 1977) or (Roberts, Smith, and Haptonstahl 2016). APSA never shortens a two- or three-author citation.
• Four or more authors: "et al." from the very first citation. (Angel et al. 1986). If two different sources would collapse to the same "et al." form, add the second author's surname (Angel, Brandt, et al. 1986) or a short title in quotes to keep them apart (15.29).
• Several sources in one parenthesis are separated by semicolons and alphabetized: (Hochschild 2015; Jentleson 2015).
• The same author across different years can drop the repeated name: (Barbarosa 1973; 1978) or, with pages, (Barbarosa 1973, 18; 1978, 32).
• The same author in the same year gets lowercase letters attached to the year: (Frankly 1957a, 1957b). Assign the letters by alphabetizing the article titles, ignoring an initial "A," "An," or "The" (15.20). The letters appear in the reference list too.
• Two authors who share a surname get a first initial: (B. Ripley 1988; R. Ripley 1964).
• Repeat citations within one paragraph need only the page number after the first full citation (15.27).
• A citation inside parenthetical text switches to brackets (15.28).

The citation sits at the end of the sentence, before the final punctuation; with a quotation, it follows the closing quotation mark. No comma separates the citation from the sentence. For the mechanics across other styles, see our complete guide to in-text citations.

Worked Examples

The examples below either come verbatim from the APSA Style Manual or apply its rules to real, checkable articles from political science journals.

1. Standard Article With One Author

The manual's model reference:

Aldrich, John H. 1980. "A Dynamic Model of Presidential Nomination Campaigns." American Political Science Review 74 (3): 651–69.

In-text: (Aldrich 1980, 655) · Narrative: Aldrich (1980) argues...

Note the compressed page range: 651–69, with only the changing digits repeated.

2. Article With Two Authors

The second author's name stays in normal order, joined by "and":

Fearon, James D., and David D. Laitin. 2003. "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War." American Political Science Review 97 (1): 75–90.

In-text: (Fearon and Laitin 2003) · Narrative: Fearon and Laitin (2003) find...

Both names appear in every citation. There is no "et al." shortcut at two authors.

3. Article With Three Authors

Commas separate the names, and "and" precedes the last:

Gerber, Alan S., Donald P. Green, and Christopher W. Larimer. 2008. "Social Pressure and Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Large-Scale Field Experiment." American Political Science Review 102 (1): 33–48.

In-text: (Gerber, Green, and Larimer 2008, 38)

All three surnames appear in the parenthetical, every time. The subtitle follows a colon, and the first word after the colon is capitalized.

4. Article With Four to Nine Authors

The reference list names every author up to nine; "et al." is reserved for the parenthetical:

Last Name, First Name, First Name Last Name, First Name Last Name, and First Name Last Name. Year. "Title of Article." Title of Journal Volume (Issue): page range.

In-text: (Angel et al. 1986)

The in-text form shortens to "et al." at four or more authors even on first citation; the reference does the same only at ten or more, where the manual says to list the first seven and finish with "et al." (14.76).

5. Article Read Online With a DOI

Whenever you read an article online, APSA requires a direct link with the citation data (14.6). The preferred order is DOI first, then a permalink, then a shortened URL. APSA's DOI form is distinctive: the prefix "doi:" followed by the numerals and slashes after ".org/", so a DOI reads like this:

doi: 10.1017/S1049096517002505

APA and current Chicago expand the same identifier into a full https://doi.org/ URL; APSA keeps the compact prefix form. In a full reference:

Fearon, James D., and David D. Laitin. 2003. "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War." American Political Science Review 97 (1): 75–90. doi: 10.xxxx/xxxxx.

(The DOI in this example is a placeholder; copy the real one from the article's landing page.) An access date is only required when the source has no publication or revision date (14.12), which for a published journal article is essentially never.

6. Article With No Issue Number

Some journals number pages continuously through a volume and print no issue number. The month or season takes the issue's place in the parentheses (14.171):

Last Name, First Name. Year. "Title of Article." Title of Journal 12 (Spring): 45–68.

If neither an issue nor a month appears anywhere on the issue, the volume and pages alone still identify the article: Title of Journal 12: 45–68.

7. Magazine Article

Magazines and newspapers swap the volume-issue-page machinery for a date. Include the month (and day, for weeklies), and page numbers only when they are useful, since they rarely are (14.188). The manual's example:

Prufer, Olaf. 1964. "The Hopewell Cult." Scientific American, December, 13–15.

In-text: (Prufer 1964)

A comma follows the magazine title, which is the visible difference from the scholarly-journal pattern.

8. Book Review Published in a Journal

A review gets the review's own title in the title spot, then "Review of" followed by the reviewed work and its author. The manual's example:

Chambers, Simone. 2018. "Against Democracy. By Jason Brennan." Review of Against Democracy, Jason Brennan. Perspectives on Politics 16 (2): 503–5. doi: 10.1017/S153759271800066X.

In-text: (Chambers 2018)

Everything after "Review of" identifies what was reviewed; the journal, volume, issue, and pages then follow as usual.

Special Cases

No Individual Author

If an organization, association, or corporation published the article and no person is named, the organization is listed as the author, even when it is also the publisher (14.84). In the text, give the full name once with a short form, then use the acronym: US International Trade Commission (1978, 12; hereafter USITC), and afterward (USITC 1978, 16). If there is no author of any kind, the title moves into the author position, and the manual explicitly says to avoid "Anonymous" unless the source itself is attributed that way (14.79).

No Date

When no publication year can be found, "n.d." takes the year's place in the reference and in the parenthetical: (Durant n.d.). This is rare for journal articles, which nearly always carry a date; check the article's first page and the issue cover before falling back on n.d.

Forthcoming and Advance Online Articles

For an article accepted but not yet published, "Forthcoming," set in roman type, replaces the year (14.146):

Last Name, First Name. Forthcoming. "Title of Article." Title of Journal.

Volume, issue, and pages are omitted because they do not exist yet; include the DOI if the journal has posted an advance version online. Once the article lands in an issue, update the entry: page numbers shift between the advance and final versions, and a citation to the advance version can point your reader at the wrong paragraph. In text, the word replaces the year: (Last Name forthcoming).

Two Articles by the Same Author in the Same Year

Attach lowercase letters to the year, ordered by alphabetizing the article titles: (Frankly 1957a, 1957b). The letters appear in the reference list entries as well, so each parenthetical points to exactly one entry. This case shows up constantly with prolific authors, and it is the first thing to check when a reference list "looks right" but a reader cannot tell which 2015 article you meant.

An Article in a Special Issue

A special issue with its own theme can be signaled before the journal title with "Special issue of," unless the issue carries a special number such as S2, in which case the number does the work (14.178):

Last Name, First Name. Year. "Title of Article." Special issue of Title of Journal Volume: page range.

An Abstract

Citing only the abstract is legitimate when that is genuinely all you used. Treat it like the article, with the word "abstract" before the journal title (14.186). If you read the full text, cite the full text; an abstract citation tells the reader precisely how much of the article stands behind your claim.

A Foreign-Language Article

Keep the original title's sentence-style capitalization (14.98). If you supply an English translation, it follows in brackets, in roman type, capitalized sentence-style (14.99). If the source itself printed only a translated title, name the original language in brackets with "in" preceding it. The journal title is treated normally.

A Reprinted Classic

For an article you read in a reprint or collected edition, both dates appear, the original in brackets first: (Marx and Engels [1933] 1964, 25). The reference mirrors the order, bracketed original date before the reprint date.

A Newspaper Article Online

Newspapers follow the magazine pattern (month and day in place of volume and issue), with two extra rules: for news websites, add the article's timestamp to the date information if it is readily available, because news stories are frequently updated (14.191), and add a city or country in parentheses after the newspaper's title when the location is not obvious from the name (14.193). Names of wire services such as the Associated Press are set in roman, without italics (14.200).

Common Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

• A comma between author and year. (Aldrich, 1980) is APA. APSA writes (Aldrich 1980). This is the single most common cross-contamination error, because most students learn APA first and the comma survives the switch.
• An ampersand between authors. (Fearon & Laitin 2003) is wrong in APSA everywhere: parentheticals and references both use "and."
• Sentence-case article titles. Journals increasingly print titles in sentence case, and APA keeps them that way. APSA converts to headline capitalization: "Ethnicity, Insurgency, and Civil War," with each major word capitalized.
• The DOI as a URL. Citation software defaults to https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096517002505 because current Chicago and APA want it that way. APSA wants doi: 10.1017/S1049096517002505. One find-and-replace fixes an entire reference list.
• "et al." in the reference list for a five-author article. The parenthetical shortens at four authors; the reference list keeps naming everyone until ten. A reference reading "Angel, Ronald, et al." for a five-author paper drops four people who wrote it.
• Italicizing the article title. Italics belong to the journal. The article gets roman type and quotation marks. When both are italic, the reader cannot tell the container from the contribution.
• Adding "pp." before the page range. APSA omits "p." and "pp." in all but the rare case where a bare number would be ambiguous (14.151).
• Citing the full page range in the text. The parenthetical points to the specific pages you used, (Gerber, Green, and Larimer 2008, 38), while 33–48 lives in the reference. Repeating the whole range in text sends your reader on a seventeen-page hunt.
• Inverting every author's name. Only the first author flips to "Last, First." A reference list with every name inverted is the fastest sign that nobody proofread the export.

APSA vs. Chicago Author-Date: What Differs for Journal Articles

APSA is a dialect of Chicago author-date, and for journal articles the two are nearly identical, which is why librarians tell political science students to start from Chicago when their software has no APSA option. The differences that remain:

Chicago 17 writes the issue as American Political Science Review 74, no. 3: 651–69, where APSA parenthesizes it: 74 (3): 651–69. That parenthetical issue number and the doi: prefix are the two visible tells of a correctly formatted APSA reference. Everything else, from headline capitalization to the et al. thresholds to letter-by-letter alphabetizing of the reference list, carries over from Chicago unchanged; our guide to Chicago author-date style covers the parent system in depth (that guide follows the current 18th edition, while APSA remains keyed to the 17th). And if you normally work in APA, the APA 7 journal article format differs from APSA on nearly every one of these points, so convert with the table above, element by element.

Quick-Reference Table