Citation Generator

Create APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE and BibTeX citations from a DOI, an ISBN or a title search.

Citation Generator tool

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Example

Input: DOI 10.1038/nature14539

Result: APA 7th: LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y., & Hinton, G. (2015). Deep learning. Nature, 521(7553), 436-444. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539

Built from the real Crossref record. The same record in MLA 9th reads: LeCun, Yann, et al. "Deep Learning." Nature, vol. 521, no. 7553, May 2015, pp. 436-44. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539.

Author Rules by Citation Style

StyleAuthor formatMany authors in the referenceIn-text, 3 authors
APA 7thLeCun, Y.Up to 20 listed; from 21, the first 19, ". . ." and the last(LeCun et al., 2015)
MLA 9thLeCun, Yann3 or more: first author, et al.(LeCun et al.)
Chicago author-dateLeCun, YannUp to 10 listed; 11 or more: first 7, et al.(LeCun, Bengio, and Hinton 2015)
HarvardLeCun, Y.4 or more: first author et al.(LeCun, Bengio and Hinton, 2015)
IEEEY. LeCun7 or more: first author et al.[1]
BibTeXLeCun, YannAll authors, joined with "and"\cite{lecun2015deep}

In-text examples are for LeCun, Bengio and Hinton (2015), as the tool formats them.

  1. Paste a DOI, an ISBN or the title of the work into the box. The hint below it shows which one was detected.
  2. Press Generate citation, or tap one of the examples to try it.
  3. For a title search, pick the right work from the list of up to five matches.
  4. Read the six formatted references and the in-text form under each one.
  5. Press Copy next to the style you need, then check names and capitals against the source.

How to Cite a Journal Article or Book in Any Style

This citation generator turns a DOI, an ISBN or a title into a finished reference in six styles: APA 7th, MLA 9th, Chicago author-date, Harvard, IEEE and BibTeX. Each one comes with its in-text form, such as (LeCun et al., 2015), and its own copy button.

A DOI or a title search is looked up on Crossref, the agency that registers DOIs for most journals and many academic books. An ISBN is looked up on Open Library, a free book catalog run by the Internet Archive. Your browser sends only what you type to these services. Crossref covers most journal articles, conference papers and academic books. It does not cover DOIs from DataCite, which are common for datasets. Open Library lists millions of books, but new or local titles may be missing. A title search shows up to five matches for you to choose from.

The formatting is done in your browser and follows the rules of each style for articles and books. APA lists up to 20 authors, uses initials and puts titles in sentence case. MLA shortens three or more authors to the first name plus et al. IEEE puts initials first, as in Y. LeCun, and numbers the entry. Journal and book titles are shown in italics on screen. The copy is plain text, so set the italics again in your document.

Always check the result against the source. Sentence case cannot tell that a word like Einstein is a name, and database records sometimes lack page numbers or use odd capitals. When your paper is done, the Word Counter checks its length and the Grammar and Spell Checker catches typos.

Sources

Frequently Asked Questions

A DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is a permanent ID for an article, chapter or book, such as 10.1038/nphys1170. Look on the first page of the article near the abstract, or on its web page. You can paste the DOI on its own, with "doi:" in front, or as a https://doi.org/ link. The tool reads all three.
APA, used in psychology, education and the sciences, puts the year right after the authors, gives initials instead of first names and uses sentence case for titles. MLA, used in literature and languages, gives the first author's full name, uses title case and puts the date near the end. In the text, APA writes (LeCun et al., 2015) while MLA writes (LeCun et al.) plus a page number.
APA wants article and book titles in sentence case, so only the first word, the first word after a colon and proper nouns keep capitals. The tool keeps acronyms like DNA and words with inner capitals like LeCun, but it cannot know that an ordinary-looking word such as Paris or Darwin is a name. Fix those by hand after you copy.
The last digit of an ISBN is worked out from the others, so a single typo makes the number invalid. ISBN-10 weights the digits 10 down to 1 and can end in X, which stands for 10. ISBN-13 weights them 1 and 3 in turn. The tool checks this before looking the book up, so re-type the number from the back cover.
Use the one your teacher, journal or department asks for. As a rough guide, APA is common in psychology and education, MLA in literature and languages, and Chicago author-date in the social sciences. Harvard is widely used at UK and Australian universities, IEEE in engineering and computer science, and BibTeX for papers written in LaTeX.

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