Website: 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

Citing Medicine – the manual of Vancouver Style – provides different templates for referencing the homepage and any other page of a website. For the homepage, the following template should be used:

Author(s). Website Title [Internet]. City where the website was created: Publisher; date of the website’s creation [cited date cited]. Available from: URL

For any other webpage, apply the following template:

Website Title [Internet]. City where the website was created: Publisher; date of the website’s creation. Page title; page publication date [cited date cited]. Available from: URL

However, the above requirements may hinder significantly the creation of bibliographic references. Thus, the development of the Internet leads to the fact that the city of the website’s creation and the publisher lose their relevance as reference elements: usually, you cannot determine where the website was created, and the publisher’s name is in most cases the same as the name of the company or is missing as well. Taking into account the above and the recommendations of universities from different countries, the web service Grafiati offers a simplified Vancouver template for individual pages of a website:

Author(s). Website Title [Internet]. Page title; page publication date [cited date cited]. Available from: URL

N.B. Put a full stop after the URL only if the URL ends with a slash (‘/’).

If the page features the date last updated in addition to the publication date, give the former in square brackets before the date cited:

[updated date updated; cited date cited]

Examples in a list of references

In accordance with the requirements of Vancouver Style:

Homepage:

Med Uni Graz [Internet]. Graz (Austria): Med Uni Graz; c2021 [cited 2021 Mar 26]. Available from: https://www.medunigraz.at/en/.

Any other page:

BBC News [Internet]. [London]: BBC, c2021. Is Europe's AstraZeneca jab decision-making flawed?; 2021 Mar 15 [cited 2021 Jun 26]. Available from: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56360646

In accordance with the simplified template offered:

Triggle N. BBC News [Internet]. Is Europe's AstraZeneca jab decision-making flawed?; 2021 Mar 15 [cited 2021 Jun 26]. Available from: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-56360646