• 3-minute read
• 28th December 2019

How to Cite a Journal Article in Vancouver Referencing

In most areas of study, new research is published in academic journals. As such, you will almost certainly need to cite a journal article in your writing at some point. That’s why, in this post, we’re looking at how to cite an academic journal article in Vancouver referencing.

In-Text Citations for Journal Articles

Vancouver referencing uses numbers in brackets for citations. You will need to number sources in the order you cite them in your work, with each number linked to an entry in a reference list.

If the first source we cited were a journal article, then, we would write:

Government regulations have positive effects on healthcare (1).

This would point to the first source in the reference list. As above, you should usually give citations before punctuation. But if the author is named in the text, cite the source immediately afterwards:

According to Stark (2), economic insecurity increases demand.

Finally, when quoting a journal article directly, include a page number in citations. For instance, we could write:

Such decisions are often “based on short-term thinking” (2: p. 186).

Here, we’re citing page 186 of the second source in the reference list.

Adding a Journal Article to the Reference List

Make sure to include all cited sources in your work should in a reference list. This is where you provide full source information.

The format to use for a journal article here is:

(Citation number) Surname Initial. Title of article. Title of Journal. Year; volume(issue): page numbers.

If available, you should use an abbreviated journal title instead of writing it out in full. For example, we would list a print article as follows:

(1) Parker P. Government policy and healthcare: A latitudinal study on healthcare availability. IISE Trans Healthc Syst Eng. 2017; 7 (2): 112–119.

Here, “IISE Trans Healthc Syst Eng” is short for IISE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering. For online journal articles, you should also include a DOI/URL and date of access. For instance:

(2) Stark T. Decision making in global healthcare institutions. Future Healthc J. 2015; 2 (3): 150–161. Available from: doi: 10.1080/22715579.2015.1412765 [Accessed June 11, 2018].

Vancouver Variations

Keep in mind that Vancouver referencing can vary depending on your school’s preferred style. Usually these differences are minor (e.g., how citations are presented), but it is always worth checking your style guide to be 100% sure that you’ve got your referencing right.

And if you’d like to be sure your referencing is clear, our editors can help.