Free tool
IEEE citation generator
Get an IEEE reference and in-text citation from a DOI or a title, following the 2023 IEEE Reference Guide. No sign-in, and nothing you type is stored.
Generate an IEEE citation
What IEEE style is for
IEEE style comes from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. It is used in electrical and electronic engineering, computer science and many other engineering courses.
It is a numbered style. Each source gets a number in square brackets, in the order you first cite it, and the reference list at the end is in number order, not alphabetical.
Example: a journal article in IEEE
Reference list entry
In-text citation
[1]
The example is the only source, so it shows [1]. In a paper, numbers follow citation order: the first source you cite is [1], the next new one is [2], and a source you cite again keeps its first number. To point to a page, add it inside the brackets: [1, p. 330].
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.
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 version of IEEE does it follow?
- The IEEE Reference Guide in its 2023 version.
- Why does every citation come out as [1]?
- IEEE numbers sources in the order you first cite them in your paper. The generator formats one work at a time, so that work is always [1]. Change the number to the work's place in your own citation order, in the text and in the reference list.
- Why isn't the journal name abbreviated?
- IEEE abbreviates many journal names, for example IEEE Trans. Power Syst. The records the generator reads give the full name, so it keeps the full name. Change it to the abbreviation by hand if your guide asks for one.