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Examples of how to refer to scientific journal articles

This page provides examples of how to refer to articles that are peer-reviewed and published in scientific journals. Your college teacher probably wants you to primarely use these types of top-quality sources when you conduct and report empirical studies.



Journal article 1-2 authors

In text

Questions about moral are important in teaching (Lönngren, 2021). Lyon and Magana (2021) argued for other issues.

Reference list

Lönngren, J. (2021). Exploring the discursive construction of ethics in an introductory engineering course. Journal of Engineering Education, 110(1), 44-69. https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20367

Lyon, J. A., & Magana, A. J. (2021). The use of engineering model-building activities to elicit computational thinking: A design-based research study. Journal of Engineering Education, 110(1), 184-206. https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20372



Journal article 3-20 authors

In text

This can be compared to previous results (Floden et al., 2021). It has also been discussed by Foley et al. (2021).

With three or more authors, write only the first author plus "et al.", including the first time.

Reference list

Floden, R. E., Carter Andrews, D. J., Jones, N. D., Marciano, J., & Richmond, G. (2021). Toward New Visions of Teacher Education: Addressing the Challenges of Program Coherence. Journal of Teacher Education, 72(1), 7-10. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487120976416

Foley, R. W., Ferguson, S. M., & Pollack, C. C. (2021). Measuring the amorphous: Substantive and methodological outcomes from concept maps. Journal of Engineering Education, 110(1), 161-183. https://doi.org/10.1002/jee.20373