Build a reference list and matching in-text citations in Vancouver, APA, AMA, Harvard, MLA, or Chicago. Paste a DOI or PubMed ID to fill the fields automatically, then copy your references or export BibTeX and RIS for your reference manager.
Vancouver and AMA are numbered styles used across medicine. APA, Harvard, MLA, and Chicago are author-date styles. Switch any time; the whole list reformats.
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Select Vancouver, APA, AMA, Harvard, MLA, or Chicago to match your target journal's instructions.
Enter the details, or paste a DOI or PubMed ID to auto-fill the fields from CrossRef or NCBI.
See the formatted reference entry and the matching in-text citation for every source.
Copy the list, download a text file, or export BibTeX and RIS for your reference manager.
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The required style is set by the target journal's author instructions. Biomedical journals usually want Vancouver or AMA numbered citations, while social science journals expect APA author-date format. Confirm before you format.
A numbered in-text marker must point to the correct numbered entry, and an author-date citation must match an alphabetised entry. Generating both together prevents the mismatches reviewers flag at submission.
Pasting a DOI or PMID pulls structured metadata from CrossRef or NCBI, which reduces transcription mistakes in author names, page ranges, and volume numbers. Always verify the imported record against the source.
Plain text cannot carry italics, so journal and book titles are marked rather than styled. Italicise them in your word processor so the final reference matches the published style exactly.
A citation generator turns the details of a source into a correctly formatted reference list entry and a matching in-text citation. In a systematic review, accurate referencing is more than a formality: every included study, every excluded record at full text, and every methodological source must be traceable from the text to the bibliography. PRISMA 2020 expects a complete and reproducible record of the studies you screened and synthesised, which means a clean reference list is part of the evidence trail, not an afterthought. This tool supports the Vancouver citation style used by most medical journals, the AMA citation style, and the APA, Harvard, MLA, and Chicago styles used across the wider literature.
The two main families are numbered and author-date. Numbered styles, including Vancouver and AMA, place a sequential marker in the text and list references in the order they first appear. Author-date styles, including APA and Harvard, place the author surname and year in the text and alphabetise the reference list. Choosing between them is not a stylistic preference but a requirement set by your target journal, so check the author instructions early. Our guide on the difference between in-text citations and the reference list explains how the two parts connect, and the Vancouver referencing style guide walks through the numbered format that dominates clinical publishing.
For large reviews, managing references by hand is impractical. A dedicated reference manager handles deduplication, full-text linking, and citation insertion, and our overview of the best reference managers compares the leading options. This generator complements that workflow: paste a DOI or PMID for a one-off citation, or export your set as BibTeX or RIS to import into Zotero, EndNote, or Mendeley. When you are ready to manage the full screening set, our free systematic review screening tool imports and deduplicates references from every major database, and the PRISMA flow diagram generator turns those record counts into the figure reviewers expect.
Getting citations right also protects against credibility problems. Inconsistent or fabricated references are a known warning sign in predatory publishing, and meeting a journal's exact formatting rules signals methodological care to editors and peer reviewers. If you would rather hand off the formatting, technical editing, and submission preparation entirely, our manuscript editing service brings your reference list and the full manuscript into line with the target journal's requirements before you submit.
It depends on the target journal. Most biomedical and clinical journals follow the Vancouver (ICMJE) numbered style, and AMA is common in North American medical journals. Psychology, education, and social science journals typically require APA author-date format, while humanities journals often use MLA or Chicago. Always confirm the style in the journal's author instructions before submission, because formatting details such as author limits, abbreviation of journal titles, and DOI inclusion vary between styles.
An in-text citation is the short marker that points to a source within your sentence, while the reference list entry is the full bibliographic record at the end of the document. Numbered styles like Vancouver and AMA use a superscript or bracketed number in text (for example, [1]) that matches a numbered entry. Author-date styles like APA and Harvard use the author surname and year in text (for example, Smith, 2024) and an alphabetised reference list. This generator produces both forms together so they always match.
Yes. Paste a DOI and the tool retrieves metadata from CrossRef, or paste a PubMed ID (PMID) and it retrieves the record from the NCBI E-utilities service. The author names, article title, journal, year, volume, issue, and pages are filled in automatically, which removes most manual typing and reduces transcription errors. You should still verify the imported fields against the original article, because source metadata is occasionally incomplete or inconsistently capitalised.
Yes, the citation generator is completely free with no signup, no account, and no usage limit. You can build an unlimited reference list, switch between styles instantly, and copy or download the output. The tool runs in your browser, so the references you enter are not stored on a server.
After adding your sources, use the export buttons to download a .bib (BibTeX) or .ris file. BibTeX is used by LaTeX and Overleaf workflows, while RIS imports into reference managers such as EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley, and Covidence. This makes it straightforward to move a screening or extraction reference set between tools without re-keying every record.
Most styles italicise journal names, book titles, and other container titles to distinguish them from article titles. Because plain-text output cannot carry formatting, this tool marks where italics belong so you can apply them in your word processor. When you paste a reference into Microsoft Word or Google Docs, italicise the journal or book title (and the volume number in APA) to match the published style exactly.
Author limits differ by style. Vancouver and AMA typically list the first three or six authors (per the journal's rule) before adding et al. APA lists up to twenty authors and uses an ellipsis before the final author when there are more than twenty. MLA lists one author then et al. for three or more, and Harvard and Chicago have their own thresholds. This generator applies the standard limit for each selected style automatically.
Reviewed by
Dr. Sarah Mitchell holds a PhD in Biostatistics from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and has over 15 years of experience in systematic review methodology and meta-analysis. She has authored or co-authored 40+ peer-reviewed publications in journals including the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, BMC Medical Research Methodology, and Research Synthesis Methods. A former Cochrane Review Group statistician and current editorial board member of Systematic Reviews, Dr. Mitchell has supervised 200+ evidence synthesis projects across clinical medicine, public health, and social sciences. She reviews all Research Gold tools to ensure statistical accuracy and compliance with Cochrane Handbook and PRISMA 2020 standards.
Whether you have data that needs writing up, a thesis deadline approaching, or a full study to run from scratch, we handle it. Most projects deliver in under 2 weeks.
Our promise: Free rework on search, screening, or synthesis if reviewers push back.
Will your review include a meta-analysis? Quote my systematic review and meta-analysis