Citation Generator
Paste a DOI, a PubMed ID or the link to an article, choose a style and copy the reference. BibTeX and RIS files are there for your reference manager. Citations are built from the metadata the publisher registered with the DOI system, or from PubMed when an article has no DOI. Always check the result against your style guide or the journal's instructions for authors.
Generate a citation
How the citation is built
- Find the DOI. A DOI is used as pasted. A PubMed ID, PMC ID, arXiv ID or ScienceDirect article ID is looked up to find its DOI, and for an article link the page’s metadata is read for one.
- Format it. The DOI goes to doi.org, which returns the citation in the chosen style from the registration agency that holds the record, such as Crossref or DataCite.
- Fall back to PubMed. A PubMed article without a DOI is formatted by the National Library of Medicine’s citation exporter, in APA 7, Vancouver, AMA or MLA.
- Link the journal. If the article’s journal is covered by Journal Metrics, a link to its page appears under the citation.
The citation is only as good as the record behind it. Titles, author names and page ranges come from the publisher’s metadata, so a mistake there appears in the result.
Citation styles
Pick the style your journal, course or reference manager asks for. Changing the style looks up the same article again in the new style.
| Style | In-text format | Often used for |
|---|---|---|
| APA 7 | Author-date | Psychology, education and many social and behavioral sciences. |
| Vancouver | Numbered | Biomedical and clinical journals. This is Elsevier’s Vancouver variant. |
| AMA | Numbered | Medicine and the AMA family of journals. |
| MLA 9 | Author-page | Literature, languages and other humanities. |
| Chicago (author-date) | Author-date | History, social sciences and some natural sciences. |
| Harvard | Author-date | Universities in the UK and Australia. Harvard has many versions; this one follows Cite Them Right. |
| IEEE | Numbered | Engineering and computer science. |
| Nature | Numbered | Nature and Nature Portfolio journals. |
Journals often add their own rules to a published style, such as abbreviated journal names or a limit on the number of authors. See the questions below and your target journal’s instructions for authors.
BibTeX and RIS downloads
When an article has a DOI, the result offers a BibTeX file for LaTeX and a RIS file that most reference managers can import, such as Zotero, Mendeley and EndNote. They carry the same record as the formatted citation but do not depend on the style you picked.
An article found only in PubMed, without a DOI, can be copied as text but has no BibTeX or RIS file.
Frequently asked questions
- Which identifiers and links can I paste?
- You can paste a DOI (with or without the https://doi.org/ prefix), a PubMed ID, a PubMed Central ID such as PMC7502203, an arXiv ID, a ScienceDirect or Lancet article ID (PII), or the link to an article page. Most of these lead to a DOI, and the citation is built from that DOI's record. A PubMed article that has no DOI can still be formatted in APA 7, Vancouver, AMA or MLA, but not in the other styles, and it has no BibTeX or RIS file. For a link, the page's metadata is read to find the DOI. Some publisher pages block automated readers, and then pasting the DOI itself works better.
- Where do I find the DOI of an article?
- Look near the title or in the citation details on the article page, where it is usually shown as a link starting with https://doi.org/10. A DOI starts with 10., then a number, a slash and a code, for example 10.1038/s41586-020-2649-2. PubMed shows it in the citation line under the article title, and many publishers print it on the first page of the PDF. If you only have a PubMed ID or an article link, paste that instead.
- Why can a citation differ slightly from my journal's house style?
- Journals often adapt a published citation style. They may ask for abbreviated journal names such as N Engl J Med, a different cut-off before et al., or no DOI. This tool applies the standard Citation Style Language definition of each style to the metadata in the DOI record, and prints the journal name as the publisher registered it. The result can therefore differ from a journal's own rules in small ways, and it can only be as accurate as that record, for example if a title is capitalized oddly or a page range is missing. Check the reference list against the journal's instructions for authors before you submit.
- Is what I paste stored or sent anywhere?
- What you paste is sent to our server only to look up the citation. Journal Metrics does not store it or keep a list of lookups, and it is not added to the page address. To build the citation, our server asks Crossref, DOI.org or PubMed for the article record, and it also fetches the page if you paste a link. Our hosting provider may log lookup requests, which contain the text you sent, so do not paste anything confidential.
- How do Vancouver and AMA citations differ?
- Both are numbered styles used in medicine, with authors written as surname and initials. The Vancouver option here follows Elsevier's Vancouver variant: it lists up to six authors before et al., leaves out the issue number and writes the DOI as a link. The AMA option lists the first three authors before et al. when an article has more than six, includes the issue number and writes the DOI as doi: followed by the number. Many journals specify their own variant of either style, so follow the journal's instructions for authors where they differ.
Sources
- DOI Citation Formatter and content negotiation. DOI Foundation. How doi.org returns a formatted citation or BibTeX and RIS for a DOI.
- Content negotiation. Crossref documentation for the same service on Crossref DOIs.
- Citation Style Language and its style repository, which define the styles applied to the record.
- Literature Citation Exporter. National Library of Medicine, used for PubMed articles without a DOI.
- Preparing a manuscript for submission to a medical journal. ICMJE recommendations, including the reference format.
Content updated October 24, 2026. Journal Metrics is not affiliated with the services listed above.