Free tool
Citation generator
Enter a DOI or a title and get the reference and in-text citation in APA, MLA, Chicago, AMA, IEEE or Harvard, built from the published record. No sign-in, and nothing you type is stored.
Generate a citation
What it can and can't find
The generator looks works up in Crossref and OpenAlex, two large indexes of published research. Journal articles and conference papers with a DOI are covered best.
Websites, most books without a DOI, reports, theses and very new work are often missing, or have thin records. For those, choose “Enter details manually” and type the details from the source itself.
Index records can be wrong or incomplete: a missing issue number, a title in capitals, an author's name spelled another way. Check each citation against the source before you hand it in.
Citation styles
- APA citation generatorAPA 7th edition. Author and year in the text. Common in psychology, education, nursing and the social sciences.
- MLA citation generatorMLA 9th edition. Author and page in the text. Common in literature, languages and the humanities.
- Chicago citation generatorChicago 18th edition, author-date. Author and year in the text, in the Chicago author-date system. Common in the sciences and social sciences.
- AMA citation generatorAMA Manual of Style 11th edition. A superscript number in the text, in citation order. Common in medicine, nursing and the health sciences.
- IEEE citation generatorIEEE Reference Guide, 2023 version. A number in square brackets in the text, in citation order. Common in engineering, computing and electronics.
- Harvard referencing generatorHarvard, Cite Them Right. Author and year in the text, as Cite Them Right sets it out. Common at UK and Australian universities.
FAQ
- Is the citation generator free?
- Yes. You don't need an account. If you send a lot of searches in a few minutes, the tool asks you to wait a moment before the next one.
- Do you store what I search for?
- No. Your search goes to our server, which looks it up in Crossref and OpenAlex and sends the citations back to your browser. We don't save the search or the results.
- Does it use AI?
- No. It doesn't use a language model. It takes the published record for the work and formats it with standard Citation Style Language (CSL) style files, the same kind many reference managers use.
- Why can't it find my source?
- Crossref and OpenAlex cover journal articles well, but websites, many books, reports, theses and very recent work are often missing. Try the DOI if the work has one, or add an author's surname to the title. If it still isn't found, choose “Enter details manually” and type its author, date, title and the other details from the source.
- Which citation styles does it support?
- APA 7th edition, MLA 9th edition, Chicago 18th edition in its author-date form, AMA 11th edition, IEEE as its 2023 reference guide sets it out, and Harvard as Cite Them Right sets it out. It does not do Chicago footnotes or other versions of Harvard.
- What should I type?
- A DOI is the most reliable: paste it bare, after doi:, or as a doi.org link. Otherwise type the title, and add an author's surname if the title is common. You get up to three matching works, best match first.
- Should I check the citation it gives me?
- Yes. The citation is only as good as the record it comes from. Compare the authors, year, title and page numbers with the source, and fix anything that differs.