Journal article: how to cite in Vancouver Style?

Create a spot-on reference in Vancouver

Select a source type:

Book Website Journal article Video (online)

Archival document Blog post Book Book chapter Complete reference Conference paper Copyright certificate Court case Dictionary Dictionary entry Disc Dissertation / Thesis Encyclopedia Encyclopedia article Extended abstract of dissertation Image Journal article Law / Act Newspaper article Patent Podcast Preprint Press release Religious text Report Social media post Software Standard Video (online) Video game Website

General rules

In the general case, Vancouver Style imposes the following template for referencing an article published in a scholarly journal:

Author(s). Article title. Journal Title. Date of publication;volume(issue):pages.

Attention:

• For the rules of giving authors’ names, see this article.
• The journal title is usually given in its abbreviated form without the full stops: Archives of neurology → Arch Neurol. However, Vancouver Style also allows giving the full journal title or the abbreviated title with full stops.
• For the rules of abbreviating the titles of English and foreign-language journals, see the manual of Vancouver Style – Citing Medicine.
• The date of publication element should be given in full as it appears in the source: day, month, and year; month and year; or year only.
• The date format to be used in English is the following: ‘2020 Dec 19.’
• The volume and issue elements are given as numbers, without the signatures ‘vol.,’ ‘no.,’ etc.
• The page range is given as numbers, without the preceding abbreviation ‘p.’ For the principles of abbreviating the numbers and other specifics of dealing with the page range in Vancouver Style, see this article.
• For the articles in a foreign language, give also the original language in the reference.
• The DOI can be indicated optionally in notes at the end of the reference in the format ‘doi: xxxxx.’

For citing the online version of a journal article, use the following bibliographic reference template:

Author(s). Article title. Journal Title [Internet]. Date of publication [cited date cited];volume(issue):pages. Available from: URL

Attention:

• Put a full stop after the URL only if the URL ends with a slash (‘/’).
• If you give the DOI separately after the URL, do not put a full stop at the end.

Examples in a list of references

Gutierrez M, Ditto R, Roy S. Systematic review of operative outcomes of robotic surgical procedures performed with endoscopic linear staplers or robotic staplers. J Robot Surg [Internet]. 2018 May 9 [cited 2021 Mar 16];13(1):9-21. Available from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11701-018-0822-5 doi: 10.1007/s11701-018-0822-5

Harju J, Juvonen P, Eskelinen M, Miettinen P, Pääkkönen M. Minilaparotomy cholecystectomy versus laparoscopic cholecystectomy. Surg Endosc [Internet]. 2006 Jan 25 [cited 2021 Jun 28];20(4):583-6. Available from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00464-004-2280-6 doi: 10.1007/s00464-004-2280-6