Citation generator: cite online in APA, Harvard and more

How the citation generator works

Faulty references cost marks, and typing them by hand costs evenings: that is what the citation generator is for. You enter a DOI, ISBN or URL, and the tool reads the title, authors, year and publisher from Crossref, from library catalogues or directly from the web page. From that it builds the finished reference, together with the in-text citation for your running text. Book, journal article, web source and book chapter are available as source types, so any source can be cited online straight away, with nothing to install.

Unlike pure AI tools, the citation generator formats 100 % rule-based: every style follows fixed patterns, and nothing is invented. It takes over the tedious part: exact punctuation, the order of the elements and the abbreviations of each style. APA 7, Harvard, MLA 9 and Chicago are available, as is the German citation style with a full footnote. That style follows German conventions, so its output uses German abbreviations such as "Aufl." (edition), "Hrsg." (editor) and "S." (page). Which style suits your subject is explained in the overview of citation styles. Still check the result briefly against your department's guidelines, because many institutes have their own variants.

If you are collecting many sources for a whole piece of work, a reference manager such as Zotero, Citavi or Mendeley is worth it. For single sources, this tool is quicker.