How the citation generator works
Paste an identifier into the box. The generator recognises what it is: a DOI such as 10.1037/ppm0000185, an ISBN-10 or ISBN-13 (the check digit is verified first, so a typo never triggers a lookup), or a web address. It then fetches the publication details from an open registry and fills in a form for the right source type.
- DOI: looked up in Crossref from your browser. If Crossref does not know it, the generator asks doi.org, which also resolves DataCite and mEDRA DOIs used by data repositories and some European publishers.
- ISBN: looked up in the Open Library Books API, then in Open Library search.
- URL: our server reads only the page's metadata (citation tags, structured data, Open Graph, title, author, date and site name). It refuses private network addresses and stops after five seconds.
Nothing is formatted on our server. Formatting happens in your browser with citeproc-js and the official Citation Style Language files, which is why the generator keeps working smoothly once the page has loaded.
Why you should always check the fields
Registries hold what publishers sent them, and that is not always what a style guide wants. Titles may arrive in capital letters, author names may be missing their initials, a book may list the reprint year instead of the edition you read, and a web page may have no visible author at all. The form shows every field before the source is added, and the preview updates as you edit.
A useful habit: compare the preview with the first page of the source. Check the author names, the year, the title and the container (journal, book or website). Those four fields decide most of what a marker will notice.
A citation generator formats what you give it. It cannot know whether the source is reliable or whether you represented it fairly. Those judgments remain yours.
Citation styles you can choose
| Style | Edition used | In-text form | Typical fields |
|---|---|---|---|
| APA | 7th edition | (Author, year) | Psychology, education, social sciences |
| MLA | 9th edition | (Author page) | Literature, languages, humanities |
| Chicago | 18th, with 17th selectable | Footnote or (Author year) | History, arts, some social sciences |
| Harvard | Cite Them Right 12th ed. | (Author, year) | Business, UK and Australian universities |
| IEEE | IEEE Reference Guide (11.29.2023) | [1] | Engineering, computing |
| AMA | 11th edition | Superscript number | Medicine, nursing, health sciences |
Switching the style re-formats every entry in your bibliography at once, so you can try a different style without re-entering anything. Ask your lecturer or the journal's author guidelines which style they expect; the generator cannot decide that for you.
Sources you can cite
Identifiers cover most academic sources, but not all. When a lookup finds nothing, or a source has no DOI, URL or ISBN, open the manual form and choose one of nine source types:
- Journal article and book chapter
- Book and report
- Website or webpage, and newspaper or magazine article
- YouTube or online video
- Thesis or dissertation, and PDF document
Each type shows the fields a complete reference needs, marked with an asterisk, and explains tricky ones, such as page ranges, article numbers and organisations as authors. Dates in the future and malformed DOIs are flagged before you add the entry.
Building, copying and exporting your bibliography
Every source you add goes into a list under the tool. Sort it alphabetically or by the date you added each entry, edit an entry, delete one, or clear the whole list. Copy all gives you the formatted list in two flavours at once: rich text that keeps italics when you paste into Word or Google Docs, and plain text for anywhere else.
Export as .txt for a quick copy, .ris for Zotero, Mendeley or EndNote, or .bib for BibTeX and LaTeX. The bibliography generator page goes deeper into exports and reference managers.
The list is saved in your browser's local storage on this device. It is never uploaded to our server, it survives a page reload, and it disappears if you clear your browser data. Export the list if you need it on another device.
In-text citations and footnotes
For every entry the generator shows the in-text form that belongs to it: a parenthetical citation for author-date styles such as APA and Harvard, a footnote for Chicago notes and bibliography, and a number for IEEE and AMA. Copy it straight into your sentence. The in-text citation generator page explains page numbers, multiple authors and organisations.
Paraphrase and cite in one place
Rephrasa pairs the citation generator with an AI paraphrasing tool. When you put a source into your own words, the idea still belongs to its author, so the natural next step is a citation. Paraphrase the passage, then cite the DOI here, and your sentence and your reference list stay consistent.
Shortcuts for common jobs: turn a DOI into a citation, cite a book by ISBN, build an MLA works cited page or a general reference list.
Free, unlimited and built on open standards
The citation generator is free for everyone with no daily limit, because it runs in your browser. Only URL lookups use our server, and they are rate limited to keep the service available. There is no account to create and no bibliography stored on our side.
Styles and locales come unmodified from the Citation Style Language project (citationstyles.org) under CC BY-SA 3.0, and formatting is done by citeproc-js. We tested the output against official examples from the APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE guides and university library guides for Harvard and AMA; the style pages show examples recreated with this tool.
Who uses a citation generator, and for what
First-year students use it to learn what a correct reference looks like. Thesis writers use it to keep a growing list consistent across chapters. Researchers use the .ris and .bib exports to move lists into the reference manager their lab shares. Librarians and writing tutors can use the official examples on each style page to explain why a reference is formatted the way it is.