How to cite a journal article in MLA 9

MLA builds every Works Cited entry from the same list of “core elements,” in a fixed order. You include the ones that apply to your source.

Works Cited format

Last, First. "Title of Article." Journal Title, vol. #, no. #, Year, pp. #–#. Database, DOI or URL.

Marlowe, Petra, et al. “Lantern Moths and Urban Light: A Field Study.” Journal of Imaginary Ecology, vol. 12, no. 3, 2024, pp. 45–67, https://doi.org/10.0000/jie.2024.0123.

• Put the article title in quotation marks and the journal title in italics.
• Then give the volume (“vol.”), issue (“no.”), date and page range (“pp.”).
• A journal’s publisher is usually left out.
• If you read the article in a database such as JSTOR, add the database name in italics after the pages, then its link.
• If the article has a DOI, give it as a full link starting with https://doi.org/. Use it instead of a URL.
• An access date is optional. You don’t need one for a stable source like a journal article with a DOI.

Authors

• One author: Last, First.
• Two authors: invert only the first name, then add “and” and the second name in normal order: Boyd, James, and Tetsuya Nishimura.
• Three or more: give the first author, then “et al.”

In-text citations

Give the author’s last name and the page number, with no comma and no “p.”:

• One author: (Marlowe 52)
• Two authors: (Boyd and Nishimura 52)
• Three or more: (Marlowe et al. 52)

If you name the author in your sentence, put only the page in parentheses. When you write about three or more authors in your own words, say “Marlowe and colleagues” rather than “et al.”

Marlowe and colleagues found that streetlights changed the moths’ flight paths (52).

If the source has no page numbers, leave the number out.