Citation Generator
Paste a DOI, a PubMed ID, a title or a whole reference. Pick a style. Every reference is looked up in Crossref and PubMed first, so the citation you copy is for a paper that exists, with its real details.
How to use it
- Paste one reference per line. A DOI (
10.1038/nature14539), a PubMed ID (PMID: 33301246), a title, or a full reference copied from another paper all work. BibTeX and RIS exports from Zotero or EndNote work too. - Choose a style. APA 7 is selected by default. Each style links to a page explaining its rules below.
- Read the badge before you copy. Green means the paper was found and the citation was built from the database record. Amber means we formatted what you typed but could not confirm it. Red means the paper is retracted or does not appear to exist.
- Copy one citation, or all of them. The in-text form is shown next to each entry.
Why check before formatting?
A citation generator that trusts its input will happily format a reference with the wrong year, a misspelt author or a page range from a different paper. Language models make this worse: studies of AI-written reference lists keep finding that a large share of the citations are wrong or invented, and the invented ones look exactly like real ones. Formatting makes them look more trustworthy, not less.
This tool reverses the order. It reads what you pasted, finds the matching record in Crossref (the DOI registry), PubMed and OpenAlex, compares titles, authors, years and journals, and only then formats. When the record and your text disagree, the record wins and you are told what changed. A retraction notice on the paper is shown in red.
Supported citation styles
- APA 7: Psychology, education, nursing, social sciences and most business programmes.
- MLA 9: Literature, languages, cultural studies and many humanities courses.
- Chicago author-date: History, economics and many sciences that follow the Chicago Manual of Style.
- Harvard: Most UK and Australian universities. There is no single official Harvard guide; this tool follows Cite Them Right (12th edition), the version most UK libraries use.
- Vancouver: Medicine, nursing, public health and most biomedical journals (ICMJE recommendations, NLM style).
- IEEE: Electrical engineering, computer science and IEEE conferences and journals.
- AMA 11: JAMA Network journals, many US medical schools and clinical journals.
The styles come from the official Citation Style Language files used by Zotero and Mendeley, so the output matches what those reference managers produce. Need a different style, or a file for your reference manager? The reference checker exports corrected BibTeX and RIS.
What gets checked
- Existence. Does a paper with this DOI, PubMed ID or title exist at all?
- Details. Do the authors, year, journal, volume and pages match the record?
- Status. Has the paper been retracted, or does it carry an expression of concern?
Lookups go to public scholarly databases only. Coverage is excellent for journal articles from the last few decades and weaker for books, chapters, theses, grey literature and papers published in the last few days.
Frequently asked questions
Is this citation generator free?
Yes. There is no sign-up and no paywall. Anonymous use covers 30 reference checks a day, which is enough for most essays; a free Phở account raises that to 300 a month.
What does "verified" mean?
We found the paper in Crossref, PubMed or OpenAlex and the title, authors, year and journal match. The citation is then built from that database record rather than from what you typed.
Why did it change my year or page numbers?
Because the publisher’s record disagrees with what you pasted. The result says "details corrected from the record" and the warnings list what changed. If you are sure your version is right, check the DOI link: publishers are occasionally wrong, but far less often than copy-pasted references.
What happens with a reference that cannot be found?
It is still formatted, exactly as you typed it, and clearly marked as not verified. Books, theses, reports and very recent papers are often missing from these databases, so "not found" is not the same as fake. A reference with a DOI that does not exist is flagged as likely fabricated.
Can I cite a book or a website?
Yes, paste it as a full reference and it will be formatted as typed. The verification is strongest for journal articles, conference papers and anything with a DOI or PubMed ID.
Do you store what I paste?
No. Your references are sent to the lookup service, checked and discarded. Only the answers from the public databases are cached, so the same paper is quicker next time.