PubMed & NIH publications
NLM Citation Generator
Create accurate NLM references for journal articles, books, reports and preprints. Paste a DOI, PubMed ID, ISBN, URL, or title to get started.
Based on Citing Medicine, the NLM Style Guide
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NLM numbers sources in order of appearance
The number is set as a superscript or in parentheses, depending on the publication. NIH grant applications and progress reports use this format throughout.
- Superscript
- …has been reported.1
- A run of sources
- …has been reported.1-3
NLM citation examples by source type
The format behind PubMed itself, set out in Citing Medicine. Journal titles use the NLM abbreviation, and the reference ends with the DOI or the PMID.
[1] Watson JD, Crick FHC. Molecular structure of nucleic acids: A structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature. 1953;171(4356):737–738. doi:10.1038/171737a0
[2] Polack FP, Thomas SJ, Kitchin N, Absalon J, Gurtman A, Lockhart S, et al. Safety and efficacy of the BNT162b2 mRNA Covid-19 vaccine. N Engl J Med. 2020;383(27):2603–2615. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa2034577
List the first six, then et al. Citing Medicine allows all names if the journal prefers.
[3] Author AA, Author BB. Title of article. Journal Abbrev. YYYY Mon;12(3):100-10. PubMed PMID: 12345678.
Older articles often have a PMID and no DOI. Paste the PMID into the generator and we fetch the rest.
[4] Author AA. Title of article. Journal Abbrev. YYYY;12 Suppl 3:S100-5.
Books keep the place of publication and use a semicolon before the year: City: Publisher; Year.
[5] Kandel ER, Koester JD, Mack SH, Siegelbaum SA. Principles of Neural Science. 6th ed. New York: McGraw Hill; 2021.
[6] Editor AA, Editor BB, editors. Title of book. 3rd ed. City: Publisher; YYYY.
[7] Author AA. Title of book [Internet]. Bethesda (MD): National Library of Medicine (US); YYYY [cited YYYY Mon DD]. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK123456/
A chapter names its authors first, then "In:", the editors, the book, and the page range after "p.".
[8] Author AA. Title of chapter. In: Editor AA, Editor BB, editors. Title of book. 3rd ed. City: Publisher; YYYY. p. 100-25.
[9] Editor AA, editor. Title of book. 3rd ed. City: Publisher; YYYY. Chapter 4, Title of chapter; p. 100-25.
[10] Author AA. Title of chapter. In: Editor AA, editor. Title of book [Internet]. City: Publisher; YYYY [cited YYYY Mon DD]. p. 100-25. Available from: https://example.com/chapter
Web sources take [Internet] after the title, the publisher and date, a cited date in square brackets, and "Available from:".
[11] Name of Organisation. Title of page [Internet]. City: Publisher; YYYY [cited YYYY Mon DD]. Available from: https://example.com/page
[12] Name of Site [Internet]. City: Publisher; YYYY [cited YYYY Mon DD]. Available from: https://example.com/
[13] Name of Organisation. Title of page [Internet]. City: Publisher; YYYY [updated YYYY Mon DD; cited YYYY Mon DD]. Available from: https://example.com/page
Government and agency reports carry the report number and, where relevant, the contract number.
[14] Author AA. Title of report. City: Name of Agency (US); YYYY Mon. Report No.: NNNN.
[15] Author AA. Title of report. City: Name of Agency (US); YYYY. Report No.: NNNN. Contract No.: NNNN.
[16] Name of Agency. Title of report [Internet]. City: Name of Agency (US); YYYY [cited YYYY Mon DD]. Available from: https://example.com/report
Preprints and datasets have their own patterns, and both must say plainly what they are.
[17] Author AA, Author BB. Title of preprint. medRxiv 12345678. Preprint posted YYYY Mon DD. doi:10.1101/YYYY.MM.DD.NNNNNN
[18] Author AA. Title of dataset [dataset]. Repository Name; YYYY [cited YYYY Mon DD]. Available from: https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx
[19] Name of Sponsor. Title of trial. ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT01234567. Updated YYYY Mon DD. Accessed YYYY Mon DD. https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT01234567
Build your NLM bibliography
- [1] Vaswani A, Shazeer N, Parmar N, Uszkoreit J, Jones L, Gomez AN, et al. Attention is all you need. Proc. Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst. 2017;30:5998–6008.
- [2] He K, Zhang X, Ren S, Sun J. Deep residual learning for image recognition. Proc. IEEE Conf. Comput. Vis. Pattern Recognit. 2016:770–778. doi:10.1109/CVPR.2016.90
- [3] Jinek M, Chylinski K, Fonfara I, Hauer M, Doudna JA, Charpentier E. A programmable dual-RNA-guided DNA endonuclease in adaptive bacterial immunity. Science. 2012;337(6096):816–821. doi:10.1126/science.1225829
- [4] Brown TB, Mann B, Ryder N, Subbiah M, Kaplan J, Dhariwal P, et al. Language models are few-shot learners. Proc. Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst. 2020;33:1877–1901.
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- Style-aware sorting Ordered and numbered for your style.
NLM citation rules at a glance
- Reference order Number sources by first appearance in the text, not alphabetically.
- In-text citations A superscript or parenthetical number, following whatever the publication requires.
- Author names Surname then initials with no punctuation: Watson JD, Crick FHC.
- More than six authors Name the first six, then et al. Citing Medicine also allows naming all of them.
- NLM journal abbreviations Use the abbreviation shown on the PubMed record, without full stops.
- Online markers Web sources carry [Internet], a bracketed cited date, and "Available from:" before the URL.
Checked against the Based on Citing Medicine, the NLM Style Guide · Last reviewed August 2026
Read our methodologyCommon NLM citation mistakes
- Alphabetising the reference list NLM lists sources in citation order. Sorting by author renumbers every citation in the text.
- Spelling journal names out in full Use the NLM abbreviation, which appears on every PubMed record.
- Omitting [Internet] for an online source The marker is what tells a reader the version you saw may have changed since.
- Leaving out the cited date Online sources need [cited YYYY Mon DD] as well as the publication date.
- Writing the full closing page number NLM shortens it: 100-10, not 100-110.
- Citing a preprint as a published article A preprint reference has to say so, and give the server and the posting date.
NLM quick reference (one page, PDF)
Element order for every source type, the online markers in full, and the preprint and dataset patterns NIH reporting now asks for. Print it, or keep it with your grant paperwork.
- Reference patterns for eight source types
- The [Internet], [cited] and "Available from:" forms
- Preprint, dataset and clinical trial registration patterns
- Where NLM, Vancouver and AMA diverge
NLM citation generator FAQ
Is this NLM citation generator free?
Yes. Generate, copy, save, and export NLM citations without signing up. There is no paid tier and no export limit.
Is NLM the same as Vancouver?
Vancouver is the shorthand name for the ICMJE recommendations, and the NLM style set out in Citing Medicine is the reference implementation behind them. The everyday forms are the same; Citing Medicine simply covers many more source types in detail.
Where is NLM style required?
PubMed records, NIH grant applications and progress reports, and many biomedical publishers. If you are filling in an NIH biosketch, this is the format it expects.
Can I cite by PubMed ID?
Yes. Paste the PMID and we pull the record straight from PubMed, which is the same database the style was built around.
How do I cite a preprint?
Name the server, the identifier and the posting date, and say that it is a preprint. The preprint and dataset tab has the pattern.
Where does the citation metadata come from?
PubMed for biomedical literature, Crossref for DOIs, and Open Library for ISBNs. Nothing is written by a language model, so a volume or page range is either verified or left blank for you to fill in. See our methodology.
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