IEEE: cite a journal article

The numbered article form

IEEE references are numbered in the order your document cites them, and the number in square brackets is what readers see in your text. This example uses number 1 only so that the structure is easy to read. It is the print-periodical form: the author's initials come before the family name, the article title is in quotation marks with a comma inside, and the journal title is italicized, followed by vol., no., pp. and the year.

With number 1, the article's IEEE reference reads: [1] M. Stone, “A small study,” Journal of Sample Studies, vol. 12, no. 2, pp. 12–18, 2024.

Entering the article

• Choose IEEE numbered reference, Journal article and Print version.
• Leave Reference number at 1 for this example, or type the article's position in your list.
• Enter Maya Stone; IEEE output writes her as M. Stone.
• Type A small study as both Source title and Reviewed sentence-case title. IEEE uses the sentence-case field.
• Complete the journal, year, volume, issue and page fields with Journal of Sample Studies, 2024, 12, 2 and 12-18, then create the reference.

Online articles and identifiers

Only the print form is reviewed. If you choose Online version for an IEEE journal article, the workbench holds the entry with Version consulted: this source form is outside the reviewed case set, because there is no reviewed IEEE template for online articles yet. A DOI on a print article is added at the end as doi: followed by the identifier. If you add a month, it is abbreviated before the year, as in Jun. 2024. Journals that use article numbers instead of pages are outside the reviewed template.

The page also asks you to check abbreviations. The workbench does not abbreviate journal titles; it prints the container exactly as you type it.

IEEE in the Citelle app

IEEE is part of Citelle Pro. In an IEEE bibliography the app numbers entries in the order you added them, and Copy in-text on a card gives the matching bracket, such as [1]. If you delete or add sources, the numbers shift with the list, so check the brackets in your text afterwards. The app turns titles into sentence case for IEEE and asks Are these names? about capitalized words it is unsure of.

IEEE article checks

• Make sure the number in your text points to the right entry.
• Keep the article and the journal in separate fields.
• Do not treat a conference paper or a technical report with a similar title as a journal article.
• Use the published page range, not the PDF's page count.

Gather the source details

• Open the article or its publisher record.
• Record authors in the published order.
• Distinguish the article title from the journal title.
• Check volume, issue, pages or article number and any assigned DOI.

Author

Maya Stone

Title as supplied

A small study

Publication year

2024

Containing work or site

Journal of Sample Studies

Volume

12

Journal issue

2

Published pages

12-18

Tools

• Open the reference workbench

Sources

• IEEE Professional Communication Society: References

Next guide: MLA 9: cite a journal article