The Citation Generator

What The Citation Generator is

The Citation Generator is a free web tool for formatting references from DOIs, ISBNs, webpage URLs, source titles, or manually entered details. It looks up source information using Crossref, OpenLibrary, and page metadata; if it cannot find a source automatically, users can complete a manual citation form. Its FAQ lists 12 built-in styles, including APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, ACM, Vancouver, AMA 11, Nature, ACS, Cell, and Elsevier Harvard. One-off citations do not require an account. An account adds projects for saving references, adding notes, and switching styles across a bibliography. Bibliographies can be exported as BibTeX, BibLaTeX, RIS, HTML, or plain text, with RIS listed for importing into EndNote, Zotero, and Mendeley. The service is intended for students, researchers, and academic writers, and citation lookup, formatting, and export are free for individual academic use. A DOI, ISBN, URL, or search string may be sent to third-party metadata providers when needed. Saved projects are private to the account, and users can request access, correction, or deletion of account data by email.

Who it suits

The Citation Generator suits students, researchers, and academic writers who need to format and export references. Project features may be useful for people organizing sources across a bibliography.

Limits

The Free plan is for individual academic use. Optional paid team plans may be introduced in the future.

Getting started

1. Open https://thecitationgenerator.com/
2. Enter a DOI, ISBN, webpage URL, or source title
3. Use the manual citation form when lookup cannot find the source
4. Choose one of the listed citation styles
5. Create an account to save references in projects
6. Export a project bibliography in the available format

Verdict

The Citation Generator covers lookup, manual entry, formatting, and bibliography export at no charge for individual academic use. Consider its metadata-sharing and project-deletion terms when deciding whether to save references in an account.