How do I cite a journal article that only has an article number in APA Style?
Answer
Many journals, but especially online only journals, have stopped assigning unique page numbers to PDFs of their articles and instead assign the entire article a number.
Article numbers can have many different formats to them, here are some examples
- e19019080
- 65
- 200245012
- sg2345
While the PDF will be numbered starting with 1, these are not the official page numbers and should not be used in citations. Instead include the article number as part of the citation.
APA Style recommends placing the article number in the same spot as you would the page numbers preceded by the word “Article.”
Author Last Name, Author First Initial(s). (Year). Article title. Journal Name, volume number(issue number), Article #. DOI/URL
Tait, J., Perotto-Baldivieso, H., McKeown, A., & Westcott, D. A. (2014). Are flying-foxes coming to town? Urbanisation of the spectacled flying-fox (Pteropus conspicillatus) in Australia. PLoS One, 9(10), Article e109810. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0109810
For APA in-text citations, you can count paragraphs and include a paragraph in text.
Author Last Name(s) (Year) writes…. (para. #).
Smith et al. (2005) writes…. (para. 3).
OR
(Author Last Name(s), Year, para. #).
(Smith et al., 2005, para. 3).
If you need further help, contact a librarian