How the APA citation generator works
- Paste an identifier or title. The tool auto-detects whether you entered a DOI (or doi.org link), an ISBN, or a free-text title.
- Verified metadata is fetched. DOIs and titles are looked up in CrossRef (150M+ scholarly records); ISBNs in OpenLibrary. For title searches you pick the right work from the closest matches — nothing is silently guessed.
- Your APA 7 citation is built. Author initials, ampersands, the 21+-author ellipsis rule, italics, sentence-case titles, and the https://doi.org/… format are applied automatically. Copy it with formatting straight into Word or Google Docs.
What you can paste
- DOI —
10.1136/bmj.327.7414.557orhttps://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.327.7414.557 - Article or book title — e.g. Measuring inconsistency in meta-analyses
- ISBN — 10 or 13 digits, with or without dashes
Frequently asked questions
How do I generate an APA citation from a DOI?
Paste the DOI or the full doi.org link and click Generate. The official CrossRef metadata for that work is used to build the APA 7th edition reference and the in-text citations.
Can I cite a source when I only know the title?
Yes — type the title and pick the correct work from the closest CrossRef matches. Showing candidates first avoids the wrong-paper errors that one-shot generators make.
Does it work for books and ISBNs?
Yes. ISBNs are looked up in OpenLibrary and formatted as APA 7 book references.
Is this citation generator accurate?
References come from publisher-deposited metadata rather than AI text generation, so details are never fabricated. One caveat applies to every citation tool: article titles are converted to APA sentence case, and proper nouns (names, places) can't be detected automatically — the tool flags this so you can re-capitalize them.
Is it free and private?
Completely free, no account. The lookup runs in your browser directly against the public CrossRef and OpenLibrary APIs — nothing you type reaches our servers.