About this citation generator A free citation generator for the five styles students and researchers are most often asked for: APA 7th edition, MLA 9th edition, Chicago 17th edition (both notes and bibliography and author-date), Harvard and IEEE. Paste a DOI, an ISBN or a web address to fill in the details, or type them in, and the page shows the reference-list entry and the matching in-text citation as you type. Add each source to your list, switch the whole list between styles, and copy it into your document with its italics or download it as a Word file.
Where your details go: a DOI lookup goes from your browser to Crossref, and an ISBN lookup from your browser to Open Library, the free public catalogues of articles and books. A web address goes to this site's server, which fetches that page, reads its title, authors and date, sends them back and keeps nothing - not the address and not the page. The rest of what you type stays on the page, and the citations you save are kept in this browser's storage on this device.
The formatting rules are written for this page from each style's own manual, and lookups are only as good as the records behind them, so check each citation against your style guide or your instructor's instructions before you hand it in.
What you can do Cite web pages, journal articles, books, chapters in edited books, newspaper and magazine articles, YouTube and other videos, reports and theses Fill in a source from its DOI (Crossref), its ISBN (Open Library) or its web address APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 17 notes and bibliography, Chicago 17 author-date, Harvard and IEEE, with the in-text citation for each Any number of authors, people or organisations, with each style's et al. rules applied for you Titles changed to sentence case or title case as the style asks, or kept exactly as you typed them A reference list saved on this device, sorted alphabetically (or numbered for IEEE), with edit and delete Copy one citation or the whole list with italics, or as plain text Download the list as a Word document with hanging indents (double-spaced for APA and MLA), a text file, BibTeX or RIS How to use the citation generator Choose your style: APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard or IEEE. Paste a DOI, ISBN or web address into the Find box and press Find, or choose the type of source and fill in the form. Check the details against the source and correct anything missing or wrong; the preview updates as you type. Press Add to list. Repeat for each source. Press Copy all to paste the list into your document, or Download .docx for a Word file. Which style should I use?
APA 7th edition From the American Psychological Association, and used across psychology, education, nursing, business and the social sciences. It is an author-date style: (Smith & Lee, 2024) in the text, and a reference list with sentence-case titles and DOIs written as links.
MLA 9th edition From the Modern Language Association, and used in English, literature, languages and the humanities. In-text citations give the author and page, (Smith and Lee 12), and the list is called Works Cited.
Chicago 17th edition From The Chicago Manual of Style, in two forms. Notes and bibliography, common in history and the arts, puts citations in footnotes and lists the sources in a bibliography. Author-date, used in the sciences and social sciences, cites (Smith and Lee 2024) in the text with a reference list.
Harvard A family of author-date styles used widely in UK and Australian universities, with no single official manual. This page follows the common form most British universities teach: (Smith and Lee, 2024) in the text, and "Available at:" with an access date for online sources. Universities often have their own variant, so check yours.
IEEE From the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and used in engineering, computing and technology. Sources are numbered [1], [2] in the order you first cite them, and the reference list follows that order. Questions
How do I cite a website with no author or no date? Leave the authors empty and the title moves to the front, as every style asks. If the organisation behind the site wrote the page, choose Organisation and type its name. With no date, leave the date empty: APA, Chicago and IEEE write n.d., Harvard writes no date, and MLA leaves it out and adds the date you read it. Fill in the date you read it either way, since several styles use it for pages that change.
Is anything I look up stored? No. DOI and ISBN lookups go from your browser straight to Crossref and Open Library. Web addresses are fetched by this site's server only to read the page's title, authors and date, and neither the address nor the page is kept or logged by it. Your saved list is in this browser's storage on this device, and nowhere else; a private window forgets it when it closes.
Why are some capital letters in my title changed? APA and IEEE want article and book titles in sentence case (only the first word, the first word after a colon and proper nouns capitalised), and MLA and Chicago want title case. The page converts titles for you, but it cannot always tell a name from an ordinary word. If a name loses its capitals, tick Keep my capitalisation and type the title exactly as it should appear.
Why did the lookup not find my web page, or fill in an author? The page has to be public, answer within a few seconds and be an ordinary web page. Some sites block automated readers, and many pages do not say who wrote them in a way a program can read. Whatever the lookup misses, type it into the form.
Can I use the citations in Word or Google Docs? Yes. Copy and Copy all put rich text on the clipboard, so italics survive when you paste into Word, Google Docs or Pages; use Copy as plain text for a plain text box. Download .docx gives a Word file with hanging indents, double-spaced for APA and MLA. BibTeX and RIS files import into reference managers such as Zotero, Mendeley and EndNote. To turn your notes into a Word document, try Markdown to Word ; to count the words in an essay, the Word Counter & Text Tools .