Citation Generator

About this tool

This online citation generator settles "how do I write this reference" in one go. Pick a source type (journal article, book, web page, conference paper, thesis, book chapter, report or newspaper), fill in authors, title, container, year, volume, issue, pages, DOI or URL, and the page formats the entry live in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago, IEEE and GB/T 7714, with an in-text citation (parenthetical and narrative) and one-click copy, and you can export BibTeX / RIS for your reference manager. Enter a DOI or ISBN and click "Fetch by DOI / ISBN" to pull metadata straight from the public CrossRef / OpenLibrary APIs; paste an existing reference to detect its style and refill. Apart from that explicit fetch, everything runs locally in your browser - nothing goes to this site.

The five styles at a glance

APA 7 (American Psychological Association)

Common in the social sciences, education, psychology and many journals. Authors as "Last, F. M.", the year in parentheses right after, article titles in sentence case, journal and volume in italics (this tool outputs plain text - add italics in Word), and DOIs as https://doi.org/ links.

MLA 9 (Modern Language Association)

Common in the humanities and literature. Article titles in quotation marks, the container (journal/website) as its own element, volume/issue as vol./no., pages as pp., three or more authors as et al.; URLs drop the http(s):// and leading www. per MLA.

Chicago (Notes-Bibliography)

Common in history, the arts and some social-science journals. Bibliography entries put authors as "Last, First", the article title in quotation marks, and join volume, issue, year and pages with parentheses and a colon.

IEEE

Common in engineering and computing. Authors are given as initials then surname, article titles in quotation marks, journal names abbreviated, volume as vol., issue as no., pages as pp., and the DOI as doi:. IEEE cites in the text by a bracketed number; this tool produces the single entry text for the reference list, so number it yourself across the whole list.

GB/T 7714 (Chinese national standard)

Widely used in Chinese theses, journals and academic publishing. More than three authors become an 'and others' marker (et al, or its Chinese equivalent); a document-type code follows the title (journal [J], monograph [M], conference [C], dissertation [D], report [R], newspaper [N], online resource [EB/OL]); Chinese author names stay whole while Western names are surname-first with un-punctuated initials.

Harvard (author-date)

Common across the UK, Commonwealth and the business/social sciences. Authors as "Surname, I." joined with "and", four or more as et al., the year in parentheses right after; article titles in single quotes, journal name, volume(issue) and pp. pages, and web pages use "Available at" with an Accessed date.

Vancouver (ICMJE numbered)

Common in medicine, biology and chemistry. Authors are surname plus concatenated initials (Smith JA), seven or more become the first six plus et al.; journal names are abbreviated and the compact "year;vol(issue):pages" punctuation is used. The text cites by number, so the list is numbered in order of appearance.

FAQ

Must authors be entered as "Last, First"?

No. One author per line; both "Smith, John" and "John Smith" are understood, and APA, MLA, Chicago, IEEE and GB/T each re-order surname and given name to their own rule. Just type Chinese names in full - they are not split into initials.

Can I submit the generated entry as-is?

As a strong first draft. Journals and institutions vary slightly on punctuation, italics and abbreviations; this tool outputs plain text (no italics), so tidy it against your target guide in Word and complete any fields flagged as missing.

How accurate is "Paste an existing reference"?

It is heuristic: it confidently reads clearly-structured styles like APA, IEEE and GB/T and pulls year, volume/issue, pages, DOI and URL from common patterns. When confidence is low it keeps your current style and says so, and you can still correct it by hand.

Do I fill in both DOI and URL?

For articles and books prefer the DOI - most styles turn it into the canonical link; for web pages fill the URL. If you provide both, article/book entries use the DOI and web entries use the URL. One is enough. With a DOI or ISBN you can also click "Fetch by DOI / ISBN" to auto-fill the rest.

Is my data uploaded or stored?

By default everything runs in your browser - there is no backend for this site and nothing is sent to it. Only when you deliberately click "Fetch by DOI / ISBN" does the browser send that identifier straight to the public CrossRef / OpenLibrary APIs; your input still lives only in this device's localStorage and the server never sees your sources.

About this tool

The citation generator takes the most tedious part of writing up a paper - reformatting references to different standards - and turns it into "enter once, get many outputs at once": switching among eight source types adjusts the fields you need, changing style is instant, and in-text citations, all five styles, BibTeX/RIS export and DOI/ISBN lookup sit on one screen, with an existing reference convertible by pasting. The fields and rules follow mainstream tools like fireoa, suited to coursework, theses and a pre-submission format check.

Author parsing, the eight-type × five-style renderers, in-text citations, BibTeX/RIS and the paste detector are pure front-end, with no third-party libraries and no backend for this site; your input and the results live only in this device's localStorage. An already-open page keeps generating offline; only the "Fetch by DOI / ISBN" button briefly reaches the public CrossRef / OpenLibrary APIs.

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Mostly front-end · 8 types · 5 styles · export/lookup · 中文 / 繁體 / English