Vancouver Citation Generator

Free Vancouver citation generator. Paste a PMID, DOI, ISBN, or reference and copy a numbered Vancouver reference in the NLM format medical journals require.

Paste a source to get a Vancouver reference

Vancouver citation examples

The same two sources appear on every CiteTools generator page, so you can compare styles side by side.

Journal article

LeCun Y, Bengio Y, Hinton G. Deep learning. Nature. 2015 May 27;521(7553):436–44. doi:10.1038/nature14539

Book

Kahneman D. Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2011.

Vancouver in-text citations

Numbered citation: (1)

How Vancouver formats a reference

Authors are written as the surname plus initials, with no periods and no comma between them: LeCun Y.
Titles use sentence case, with no quotation marks and no italics.
The journal name is followed by the date, then volume, issue, and pages in the compact form 2015 May 27;521(7553):436–44.
Page ranges drop repeated digits: 436–44, not 436–444.
The first six authors are listed. A work with seven or more shows the first six followed by et al.
Books give the place of publication, the publisher, and the year: New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 2011.

Who uses Vancouver style

Vancouver is the numbered style used in medicine, nursing, pharmacy, and the life sciences. It follows the ICMJE Recommendations and the National Library of Medicine guide Citing Medicine. Each source gets a number the first time it is cited, shown in round brackets, square brackets, or superscript depending on the journal, and the reference list runs in that order. PubMed stores the fields this style needs, which makes a PMID the most reliable input.

Frequently asked questions

Should the citation number be in brackets or superscript?

It depends on the journal or university. Vancouver fixes the reference list format but leaves the in-text marker to the publisher: (1), [1], and a superscript 1 are all in use. Check the author guidelines and stay consistent.

Can I generate a Vancouver reference from a PMID?

Yes. Paste the PubMed ID, with or without the PMID: prefix. CiteTools reads the record from the National Library of Medicine, including the journal’s official abbreviation.

Is Vancouver the same as AMA?

They are close relatives. Both number sources in order of first citation and abbreviate journal titles. AMA italicizes journal names, leaves out the month and day, and writes the page range in full, so do not submit one in place of the other.