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Chicago Style Guide: References: Journal Articles

A guide to using Chicago (17th ed.) style in writing research papers

Citing journal articles

On your References page, list all your sources alphabetically by author name, according to the pattern shown here.  Use a hanging indent!

Format: Author, Alice, Bob Author, & Cassandra Author.  Year.  "Title of article." Title of Periodical, volume number, no. 1 (month): pages. https://doi.org/xx.xxx/yyyy or source.

  • Scholarly resources in databases often include a Digital Object Identifier (DOI), which is a number.  If a DOI is available, use that instead of a URL.

  • If there is no DOI: online scholarly resources and news sites often have unstable URLs and offer permalinks, which are shorter and permanent.  Look for a "permalink" button and use that if one is available.

  • If there are four or more authors, list up to ten in the citation.  For more than ten authors, list the first seven in the reference list, followed by et al. (Latin abbreviation for "and others;" note that al has a period, but et does not.)

Scholarly article from a database, with a DOI:

Nagy, Attila, Csaba Kiss, Csaba Sós, and Gábor Géczi. 2017. “Recognition of the Symptoms of a Concussion by Canadian and Hungarian Ice Hockey Players.” Cognition, Brain, Behavior 21 (4): 321–33. doi:10.24193/cbb.2017.21.20.

Keng, Shao-Hsun, Chun-Hung Lin, and Peter F. Orazem. 2017. “Expanding College Access in Taiwan, 1978–2014: Effects on Graduate Quality and Income Inequality.” Journal of Human Capital 11, no. 1 (Spring): 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1086/690235.

Scholarly article from a database, without a DOI:

Satterfield, Susan. 2016. “Livy and the Pax Deum.” Classical Philology 111 (2): 165–76. https://butte.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=132988083&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

LaSalle, Peter. 2017. “Conundrum: A Story about Reading.” New England Review 38 (1): 95–109. Project MUSE.

Toy, Ozan, Ron Bogdasarian, and Mill Etienne. 2014. "Consequences of Sub-Concussion and Concussion in Male Ice Hockey Players." Functional Neurology, Rehabilitation, and Ergonomics 4 (2): 115-123. https://butte.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/1655268520?accountid=39071.

Non-scholarly magazine article from a database (no DOI):

“Next Men Up.” 2018. Sports Illustrated 129 (8): 64–66. https://butte.idm.oclc.org/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=132116887&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Article from an online journal or magazine:

Sugar, Rachel. 2018. “But What Does Umami Taste Like? A Biopsychologist Explains What Mushrooms, Burgers, Tomatoes, and Aged Hard Cheese all have in common.” Vox, Dec. 10, 2018. https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/10/18129391/what-is-umami-taste-msg

Mead, Rebecca. 2017. “Margaret Atwood, the Prophet of Dystopia.” New Yorker, April 17, 2017.  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/17/margaret-atwood-the-prophet-of-dystopia

Newspaper article:

Kalmus, Peter,  Kim Cobb, and David M. Romps.  2018. "We study the climate. We chose not to fly to D.C. for a conference on it." Washington Post, Dec. 10, 2018. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/12/10/we-study-climate-we-chose-not-fly-dc-conference-it/?utm_term=.b50710b913ad

Urseny, Laura. 2018. "Wildfires more reason to consider prescribed burning, says Chico State professor." Chico Enterprise-Record, Dec. 8, 2018. https://www.chicoer.com/2018/12/08/speaker-wildfires-more-reason-to-consider-prescribed-burning/

Chicago Style Handbook

Find more help

The Chicago Manual of Style Online has helpful sample citations.

Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL) mostly only covers the NB format that Butte College instructors do not tend to use.  But it still has some helpful Author Date format tools:

Want to try a new, free software tool to build your bibliography?  MyBib is the best tool we've seen for building and keeping a list of citations.  It's easy to use and lets you switch between several styles.  Try it out at https://www.mybib.com/