What is the Vancouver referencing style?

Vancouver is a numbered citation style for medicine and the biomedical sciences. Sources are numbered in the order they are first cited, and the reference list follows that order. It goes back to a 1978 meeting of medical journal editors in Vancouver, the group that became the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The detailed rules are kept by the US National Library of Medicine in Citing Medicine.

How many authors do I list in a Vancouver reference?

The ICMJE sample references list the first six authors followed by et al., and this generator does the same. The NLM’s Citing Medicine lists all authors, and some journals ask for three before et al. Follow your target journal’s instructions for authors.

Do Vancouver references include the DOI?

Many journals now ask for it. The NLM format puts it at the end as doi: followed by the DOI, for example doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2034577. This generator follows Elsevier’s variant and writes it as a https://doi.org/ link. Use the form your journal shows in its examples.

Can I make a Vancouver reference from a PubMed ID?

Yes. Paste the PubMed ID or the PubMed link. If the article has a DOI, the reference is built from the DOI record. If it has none, the National Library of Medicine’s citation exporter formats it in NLM style, which is the basis of Vancouver.

What is the difference between Vancouver and AMA style?

Both are numbered styles used in medicine. AMA lists the first three authors and et al. when there are more than six, prints the journal name in italics, gives the full page range and writes the DOI as doi:. Vancouver lists six authors before et al., does not italicize the journal and shortens the page range. Use the one your journal asks for.

Vancouver Citation Generator

Paste a DOI, PubMed ID or article link and copy a Vancouver reference for your reference list. Vancouver is the numbered style used by most medical and biomedical journals. The format, examples and rules below follow the National Library of Medicine and ICMJE conventions, so you can check the result against your journal’s instructions for authors.

Vancouver reference format for a journal article

Author AA, Author BB, Author CC. Title of article. Abbreviated Journal Title. Year;Volume(Issue):first page-last page. doi:10.xxxx/xxxxx

Authors: surname followed by initials, with no periods or spaces between the initials (Krejcie RV). Names are separated by commas.
Title: the article title in sentence case, with no quotation marks or italics.
Journal: the NLM abbreviation, without periods, such as N Engl J Med or Educ Psychol Meas.
Year, volume, issue and pages: a semicolon after the year, the issue in parentheses, a colon, then the page range with repeated leading digits dropped (2603-15).
DOI: many journals ask for it at the end, written as doi: followed by the DOI or as a https://doi.org/ link.

Vancouver examples

These are the generator’s own results for real articles, copied on November 1, 2026. Paste the same DOI above to reproduce them.

Two authors

Krejcie RV, Morgan DW. Determining Sample Size for Research Activities. Educational and Psychological Measurement 1970;30:607–10. https://doi.org/10.1177/001316447003000308.

Generated from DOI 10.1177/001316447003000308

More than six authors

Polack FP, Thomas SJ, Kitchin N, Absalon J, Gurtman A, Lockhart S, et al. Safety and Efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine. New England Journal of Medicine 2020;383:2603–15. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmoa2034577.

Generated from DOI 10.1056/NEJMoa2034577

The same trial reference edited to NLM rules

Polack FP, Thomas SJ, Kitchin N, Absalon J, Gurtman A, Lockhart S, et al. Safety and efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 vaccine. N Engl J Med. 2020;383(27):2603-15. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2034577

The journal name is abbreviated, the issue number is added, the title is in sentence case and the DOI is written as doi:. Make these edits when your journal follows NLM exactly.

Vancouver in-text citations

Number each source in the order you first cite it, and reuse the same number whenever you cite that source again. Depending on the journal, the number goes in square brackets, in parentheses or in superscript. Cite several sources together as [1,3] or a run as [2-5].

Sample sizes for survey research are often read from a published table [1].

The vaccine was 95% effective against Covid-19 in the pivotal trial [2].

What to check before you submit

Order the reference list by number, in the order sources are first cited in the text, not alphabetically.
List the first six authors, then et al. This is the ICMJE convention. The NLM’s Citing Medicine lists every author, and some journals set their own limit.
Abbreviate journal titles as the NLM Catalog does, and do not italicize them.
This generator applies Elsevier’s Vancouver variant, which leaves out the issue number and writes the DOI as a link. Add the issue and change the DOI to doi: form if your journal follows NLM exactly.
The journal name is printed in full, as the publisher registered it. Replace it with the NLM abbreviation if your journal asks for one.

Vancouver format for a book

Author AA, Author BB. Title of book. Edition. Place of publication: Publisher; Year.

For example: Murray PR, Rosenthal KS, Kobayashi GS, Pfaller MA. Medical microbiology. 4th ed. St. Louis: Mosby; 2002. This is the book example in the NLM’s sample references for ICMJE. Books and chapters that have a DOI can be pasted into the generator.

Frequently asked questions

What is the Vancouver referencing style?: Vancouver is a numbered citation style for medicine and the biomedical sciences. Sources are numbered in the order they are first cited, and the reference list follows that order. It goes back to a 1978 meeting of medical journal editors in Vancouver, the group that became the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). The detailed rules are kept by the US National Library of Medicine in Citing Medicine.
How many authors do I list in a Vancouver reference?: The ICMJE sample references list the first six authors followed by et al., and this generator does the same. The NLM’s Citing Medicine lists all authors, and some journals ask for three before et al. Follow your target journal’s instructions for authors.
Do Vancouver references include the DOI?: Many journals now ask for it. The NLM format puts it at the end as doi: followed by the DOI, for example doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2034577. This generator follows Elsevier’s variant and writes it as a https://doi.org/ link. Use the form your journal shows in its examples.
Can I make a Vancouver reference from a PubMed ID?: Yes. Paste the PubMed ID or the PubMed link. If the article has a DOI, the reference is built from the DOI record. If it has none, the National Library of Medicine’s citation exporter formats it in NLM style, which is the basis of Vancouver.
What is the difference between Vancouver and AMA style?: Both are numbered styles used in medicine. AMA lists the first three authors and et al. when there are more than six, prints the journal name in italics, gives the full page range and writes the DOI as doi:. Vancouver lists six authors before et al., does not italicize the journal and shortens the page range. Use the one your journal asks for.

Other citation styles

AMA Citation Generator
IEEE Citation Generator
Harvard Referencing Generator
Chicago Citation Generator
DOI to BibTeX Converter
Citation generator with all styles, including APA 7, MLA 9 and Nature.

Sources

Citing Medicine, 2nd edition. The National Library of Medicine’s style guide for authors, editors and publishers.
Samples of formatted references for authors of journal articles. NLM examples that follow the ICMJE recommendations.
NLM Catalog. Look up the standard abbreviation of a journal title.
Citation Style Language styles. The open style definitions that doi.org applies to the DOI record.

Content updated November 1, 2026. Journal Metrics is not affiliated with the publishers of these style guides.

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