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Vancouver style

Free Vancouver referencing generator

Paste a DOI, URL or ISBN and get a Vancouver style reference in seconds. The numbered system used in medicine, nursing, dentistry and the biomedical sciences.

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Changes what info we look for and how we format it

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Paste a URL — e.g. https://bbc.com/article

Here is how it works
1
Pick your source type
Choose from the left. Website, book, journal, YouTube. It changes what we look for and how we format it.
2
Paste and cite
Drop in a URL, ISBN, DOI or title. Hit Cite. We check academic databases first, then AI fills in the rest.
3
Switch styles freely
APA, MLA, Chicago and more. Switch any time and your citation regenerates automatically in the new format.

When you use Vancouver style

Vancouver is the referencing style of medicine. It was agreed by medical journal editors meeting in Vancouver in 1978, grew into the ICMJE recommendations, and today it is what most medical, nursing and biomedical courses mean when they say use numbered references.

The style has two rules that define it. First, sources are cited by number in order of first appearance, and each source keeps its number for the whole paper. Second, the references themselves are compressed: authors as surname plus initials with no periods between initials, journal titles abbreviated to their official NLM short forms, and minimal punctuation everywhere.

Those journal abbreviations are the part nobody memorizes. The New England Journal of Medicine becomes N Engl J Med, and there are thousands of these official short forms. This is exactly the kind of detail a generator should handle for you. Paste the DOI of the paper you are citing and the reference comes out with real metadata rather than guesswork.

The formats, with real examples

Paste your source into the tool above and it fills these in for you. If you would rather see the pattern, here is exactly what each one looks like.

Journal article
Author AA, Author BB. Title of article. Abbreviated Journal Title. Year;Volume(Issue):pages.
EXAMPLEKucsko G, Maurer PC. Nanometre-scale thermometry in a living cell. Nature. 2013;500(7460):54-8.
Book
Author AA. Title of book. Edition. Place: Publisher; Year.
EXAMPLEBrown C. The history of everything. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2021.
Website
Author AA. Title of page [Internet]. Site Name; Year [cited Year Month Day]. Available from: URL
EXAMPLESmith J. How climate change affects oceans [Internet]. National Geographic; 2023 [cited 2026 Aug 14]. Available from: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/oceans
Chapter in a book
Author AA. Title of chapter. In: Editor BB, editor. Title of book. Place: Publisher; Year. p. pages.
EXAMPLELee S. Cardiac assessment. In: Hall T, editor. Clinical examination. London: Elsevier; 2020. p. 33-51.

In-text citations

Parenthetical: A number in parentheses (1) or square brackets [1] at the point of citation, before or after the punctuation depending on your journal's preference. Several sources: (1,3) or a range (1-4).
Narrative: Smith et al. (2) reported similar outcomes in a larger cohort.

The first source you cite is (1), the second is (2), and each keeps its number every time it reappears. Superscript numbers are also common; pick whichever your department or target journal uses and stay consistent.

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Mistakes people make in Vancouver style

COMMON SLIP
Writing author names with full first names or with periods, like Brown, C.
WHAT TO DO
Vancouver is surname then initials with nothing between: Brown C. Multiple authors are separated by commas: Brown C, Smith J, Lee S.
COMMON SLIP
Using the full journal title instead of the NLM abbreviation.
WHAT TO DO
Vancouver abbreviates journal titles to their official National Library of Medicine forms, so The Lancet stays Lancet and the British Medical Journal becomes BMJ. When you cite by DOI the correct short form usually comes with the metadata.
COMMON SLIP
Listing every author when there are ten or more.
WHAT TO DO
The usual rule is to list the first six authors and then write et al. Check your department, because some journals want all authors, but six plus et al. is the standard ICMJE pattern.
COMMON SLIP
Ordering the reference list alphabetically.
WHAT TO DO
The list is ordered by citation number, meaning the order sources first appear in your text. Alphabetical order is a Harvard and APA habit that has no place in Vancouver.

Questions students actually ask

How do I cite a journal article in Vancouver style?
Author AA, Author BB. Title of article. Abbreviated Journal Title. Year;Volume(Issue):pages. Note the compressed page range, so 54-8 rather than 54-58, and no spaces around the semicolon and colon in the year, volume and pages block.
How do page numbers work in Vancouver references?
Vancouver compresses closing page numbers to the shortest unambiguous form. Pages 145 to 163 become 145-63, and 54 to 58 becomes 54-8. It looks like a typo the first time you see it, but it is the correct convention.
How do I cite a website in Vancouver?
Author or organization. Title of page [Internet]. Publisher or site; year [cited year month day]. Available from: URL. The [Internet] tag and the cited date are required parts, because online content changes and the reader needs to know which version you used.
Is Vancouver the same as the AMA style?
They are siblings, not twins. Both are numeric biomedical styles with abbreviated journal titles, but AMA is the specific house style of the American Medical Association with its own manual, superscript citation numbers, and small punctuation differences. If your course says AMA, use the AMA generator on this site instead.
Is this Vancouver generator free?
Yes. Every style here is free without an account or a daily cap. Paste your DOI above and the reference is ready to drop into your list.

Keep going

AMA generator →IEEE generator →Guide: DOI vs ISBN →
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