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Citation generator

Paste a DOI or enter the details yourself. You get the reference-list entry and the in-text citation, ready to copy. No account and no limits.

Citation generator

Look a source up by DOI or enter it by hand. Free, no signup.

Paste a DOI or a doi.org link. Most journal articles print theirs on the first page.

Authors

For an organisation, leave the first name empty and put the full name in the last-name box.

Optional. Used by medical and science styles such as AMA and Vancouver.

A year, or a full date as YYYY-MM-DD. For example 2023 or 2023-05-14.

For example 101-118.

Formatting by citeproc-js and the Citation Style Language project. Credits and licences

How it works

Where the details come from

A DOI lookup goes from your browser straight to Crossref, the registry where publishers deposit article metadata. If Crossref doesn’t hold the DOI, the lookup asks doi.org instead, which covers datasets, theses and software registered with DataCite. Nothing passes through our servers and nothing is stored.

How the formatting is done

The formatting rules are not ours. Each style is a file from the open Citation Style Language repository, the same files Zotero and Mendeley use, run by the citeproc-js engine. When a style manual publishes a new edition, the CSL maintainers update the file, usually some time after the manual appears.

What to check before you paste

Registries store what publishers send them. Titles can arrive in capitals or in title case, and author names can be incomplete. The lookup fills in the form so you can fix those details and generate again. One thing the generator cannot do is turn a title-case title into sentence case, which APA and several other styles require, so check the capitalisation yourself.

What it doesn’t do

It formats sources you have already read. It doesn’t find sources, summarise them or write about them.

Styles and their guides

Each guide explains the rules behind the output, with examples for the source types a form can’t cover.

Questions about the generator

Is the citation generator really free?

Yes. There is no account, no daily limit and no watermark. It runs in your browser.

Which citation styles does it cover?

APA 7th, MLA 9th, Chicago 18th (notes and author-date), Harvard (Cite Them Right), IEEE, Vancouver, AMA 11th, ASA, Turabian 9th and more than fifteen others, including national standards such as ABNT, GB/T 7714 and ČSN ISO 690, and the legal styles Bluebook, OSCOLA and AGLC.

Can I cite a book or a website that has no DOI?

Yes. Choose the source type and fill in the fields by hand. We don’t offer ISBN or URL lookup, because no free service returns details reliable enough to cite from without checking every field anyway.

How accurate is the output?

The formatting follows the Citation Style Language file for each style, so punctuation, order and italics are as that file defines them. The content is only as good as the details that go in. Check names, dates and capitalisation against the source, and follow your instructor or journal where they differ from the manual.

Does it work for legal citations?

Partly. Bluebook, OSCOLA and AGLC are included and format articles, books and chapters. Cases and legislation need fields this form doesn’t have, so use the examples in the guides for those.

Will Wonders write my paper for me?

No. Wonders helps you find, read and organise sources, and keeps a record of where each claim came from. The writing is yours.

Citations are formatted by citeproc-js (© Frank Bennett, CPAL 1.0) using unmodified style and locale files from the Citation Style Language project, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0. DOI metadata comes from Crossref and doi.org.