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 should number sources in the order you cite them, with each number indicating an entry in a reference list.
We cite journal articles in the same way as any other source. For example:
Government regulations have positive and negative effects on healthcare (1).
This is a citation for 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, you should cite the source immediately afterwards:
According to Stark (2), economic insecurity increases demand.
Finally, when quoting a journal article directly, you should also include a page number in citations. For instance:
However, such decisions are often ‘based on short-term thinking’ (2: p. 186).
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Adding a Journal Article to the Reference List
As with all sources, you should include any journal articles you’ve cited in your work in a reference list. The format to use 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 11 June 2018].
Vancouver Variations
Keep in mind that Vancouver referencing can vary depending on your university’s preferred style. Usually these differences are minor (e.g. how citations are presented). However, it is always worth checking your style guide to be 100% sure that you’ve got your referencing right.