Medical journals (ICMJE)
Vancouver Citation Generator
Create accurate Vancouver references for journal articles, books, chapters and online sources. Paste a DOI, PubMed ID, ISBN, URL, or title to get started.
Based on the ICMJE Recommendations and NLM Citing Medicine
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Vancouver numbers sources in order of appearance
Journals differ on the marker: parentheses on the line, square brackets, or a superscript number. The numbering itself is the same in all three.
- On the line
- …was effective (1).
- A run of sources
- …was effective (1–3).
Vancouver citation examples by source type
The ICMJE format: surname then initials with no punctuation, sentence-case title, journal abbreviation without italics, then year, volume, issue and pages.
[1] 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 names, then et al. This is the most common difference from AMA, which stops at three.
[2] Doll R, Hill AB. Smoking and carcinoma of the lung. Br Med J. 1950;2(4682):739–748. doi:10.1136/bmj.2.4682.739
[3] Author AA, Author BB. Title of article. Journal Abbrev. Forthcoming YYYY. doi:10.xxxx/xxxxx
[4] Name of Working Group. Title of article. Journal Abbrev. YYYY;12(3):100-10.
Vancouver shortens the closing page: 100-10, not 100-110.
Unlike AMA, Vancouver keeps the place of publication: 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] Name of Organisation. Title of book. City: Publisher; YYYY.
A chapter names its authors, then "In:", then the editors and the book, ending with the page range.
[8] Author AA. Title of chapter. In: Editor AA, Editor BB, editors. Title of book. 3rd ed. City: Publisher; YYYY. p. 100-25.
[9] Author AA. Title of chapter. In: Editor AA, editor. Title of book. Vol. 2. City: Publisher; YYYY. 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
Online sources carry [Internet] after the title, a cited date in square brackets, and "Available from:" before the URL.
[11] World Health Organization. Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). World Health Organization. Accessed 2026-08-15. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/cardiovascular-diseases-(cvds)
Our generator writes the plain form. Journals following ICMJE strictly also want [Internet] and "Available from:".
[12] Name of Organisation. Title of page [Internet]. City: Publisher; YYYY [cited YYYY Mon DD]. Available from: https://example.com/page
[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
Reports name the issuing body, the report number and the sponsoring organisation where there is one.
[14] Author AA. Title of report. City: Name of Agency; YYYY. Report No.: NNNN.
[15] Name of Agency. Title of report [Internet]. City: Name of Agency; YYYY [cited YYYY Mon DD]. Available from: https://example.com/report
[16] Editor AA, editor. Title of conference; YYYY Mon DD-DD; City, Country. City: Publisher; YYYY.
A thesis takes a bracketed description of the degree, then the place and the awarding institution.
[17] Author AA. Title of dissertation [dissertation]. City: University Name; YYYY.
[18] Author AA. Title of thesis [master's thesis]. City: University Name; YYYY.
[19] Author AA. Title of dissertation [dissertation on the Internet]. City: University Name; YYYY [cited YYYY Mon DD]. Available from: https://example.com/thesis
Build your Vancouver 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.
Vancouver citation rules at a glance
- Reference order Number sources by first appearance in the text, not alphabetically.
- In-text citations A number in parentheses, brackets or superscript. Check your target journal and keep it consistent.
- Author names Surname then initials with no punctuation: Doudna JA.
- More than six authors Name the first six, then et al. AMA stops at three, which is the usual point of confusion.
- Sentence case titles Article titles take sentence case. Journal names use the NLM abbreviation.
- Books keep the city City: Publisher; Year. Unlike AMA, Vancouver did not drop the place of publication.
Checked against the ICMJE Recommendations and NLM Citing Medicine · Last reviewed August 2026
Read our methodologyCommon Vancouver citation mistakes
- Using the AMA three-author rule Vancouver names the first six authors before et al. Three is AMA.
- Dropping the city from a book reference That is the AMA 11th edition change. Vancouver still wants City: Publisher; Year.
- Spelling journal names out in full Use the NLM abbreviation, which is what PubMed shows on the record.
- Writing the full closing page number Vancouver shortens it: 100-10, not 100-110.
- Alphabetising the reference list The list follows citation order. Sorting by author renumbers every citation in the text.
- Omitting [Internet] and the cited date Journals following ICMJE strictly want both, plus "Available from:" before the URL.
Vancouver quick reference (one page, PDF)
Element order for every source type, the six-author rule, and the strict ICMJE forms for online sources. Print it, or hand it to a research group.
- Reference patterns for eight source types
- The six-author rule, and how it differs from AMA
- The [Internet], [cited] and "Available from:" forms in full
- Which NLM abbreviation to use, and where to look it up
Vancouver citation generator FAQ
Is this Vancouver citation generator free?
Yes. Generate, copy, save, and export Vancouver citations without signing up. There is no paid tier and no export limit.
Is Vancouver the same as AMA?
They are close relatives, not the same style. Both number sources in citation order and write author names as Doudna JA. Vancouver names six authors before et al. and keeps the place of publication in book references; AMA names three and dropped the city in its 11th edition.
Parentheses, brackets or superscript?
All three are used. The ICMJE Recommendations leave the marker to the journal, so check the author guidelines for where you are submitting and stay consistent throughout.
How do I abbreviate a journal name?
Use the NLM abbreviation, which appears on every PubMed record and in the NLM Catalog. If you paste a PubMed ID into the generator, we take the abbreviation straight from the record.
Can I cite by PubMed ID?
Yes. Paste the PMID and we pull the record from PubMed, which covers most biomedical articles, including older ones with no DOI.
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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