DOI to citation generator
Paste one or more DOIs, pick a style and get a reference list you can copy straight into your paper. The details come from each paper's own record, and the formatting from the official style files.
Your reference list
How it works
Paste your DOIs and pick a style
One per line, up to 10 at a time. A bare DOI, a doi: prefix or a full doi.org link all work. Choose one of nine styles, from APA and MLA to Vancouver and ACS.
We look each one up
Each DOI is looked up in OpenAlex, an open catalogue of scholarly works, and then at doi.org when OpenAlex has no record. That covers DOIs registered with Crossref and DataCite.
Copy the list
The references come back formatted and in the order the style asks for, so an APA list is alphabetical. Copy it with the formatting, such as italic journal names, kept.
A worked example
Paste the DOI of the 2015 Nature review of deep learning, choose APA, and the reference reads:
10.1038/nature14539
LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y., & Hinton, G. (2015). Deep learning. Nature, 521(7553), 436–444. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539
The same DOI in IEEE becomes a numbered reference with the authors' initials first. In MLA, the title goes in quotation marks and the journal in italics. The tool applies each style's own rules, so you only choose the style.
What each result means
- Found
- The DOI resolved and the reference is built from its record. Check it once, as you would any reference, before you hand in.
- No record found
- Neither OpenAlex nor doi.org knows this DOI. It may have a typo, or it may be very new. Copy it again from the paper's own page.
- This DOI is registered with an agency we cannot read yet
- The DOI exists, but it belongs to a registration agency other than Crossref or DataCite, so we cannot read its record yet. Many Japanese, Korean and Italian DOIs are like this. Write that reference by hand.
- Not a DOI
- The line does not look like a DOI. A DOI starts with 10., then a number, a slash and the rest.
- Daily limit reached
- The daily limit for the free tools has been reached. It resets at midnight UTC.
- Could not look this up right now
- A lookup or the formatter did not answer in time. Nothing is wrong with your DOI: try again in a minute.
Which style should I use?
Use the style your course, department or journal names. If nobody has said, ask: markers notice the wrong style quickly.
APA is common in psychology, education and the social sciences. MLA is used in literature and the humanities. Chicago author-date appears in history and the social sciences, Harvard in many UK and Australian courses, and IEEE in engineering and computer science. Vancouver and AMA are the usual choices in medicine and the health sciences, the Nature style belongs to the Nature journals, and ACS is used in chemistry.
The parts of a reference
Most styles use the same pieces in a different order: the authors, the year, the title of the paper, the journal or book it appeared in, the volume, issue and pages, and the DOI.
Author-date styles such as APA, Chicago author-date and Harvard put the year near the start and sort the list by author. Numbered styles such as IEEE number each source in the order you first cite it.
In-text citations
A reference list is half of the job. Each source also needs a citation in your text where you use it, such as (LeCun et al., 2015) in APA or [1] in IEEE.
Our guide to APA in-text citations covers one, two and three or more authors, page numbers and secondary sources.
Check before you hand in
A reference is only as good as the record behind it. Records are usually right, but a title can carry odd capitals, a conference paper can be listed as a journal article, and very new papers sometimes lack a page range.
Read each reference once against the paper itself, especially the capitals in titles, which some styles change and others keep.
Questions
Is this DOI to citation generator free?
Yes. You can format 10 DOIs at a time and 30 a day without an account. The limit resets at midnight UTC.
Which citation styles can I choose?
APA 7th edition, MLA 9th edition, Chicago author-date, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver, AMA, Nature and ACS.
Where do the details come from?
From OpenAlex, an open catalogue of scholarly works, and from doi.org, which hands the request on to Crossref or DataCite depending on who registered the DOI. The formatting uses the official style files of the Citation Style Language project.
Do you keep the DOIs I paste?
No. The DOIs are sent to OpenAlex and doi.org to look them up, and are not saved or linked to you. We count how many lookups each visitor makes in a day, using a key that cannot be turned back into an address and that changes whenever our service restarts.
Why is my reference list in a different order from my DOIs?
Each style decides the order. APA, Chicago author-date and Harvard sort by author, so the list is alphabetical.
Can I get BibTeX instead?
Yes, use the DOI to BibTeX converter for the same DOIs.
A DOI says it is registered with an agency you cannot read yet.
Most DOIs are registered with Crossref or DataCite, and we can read those. Some registration agencies, common for Japanese, Korean and Italian publications, publish records we cannot read yet. Write those references by hand.
Related
Your next paper, with real citations.
Describe your paper and get an outline in a minute. The Free plan needs no card.