Frequently Asked Questions

A citation is a reference to a source of information used in your work. It gives credit to the original author and allows readers to locate the source themselves. Citations typically include details like author name, publication date, title, and where the source can be found.

Citing sources is essential for several reasons: it gives credit to original authors, helps avoid plagiarism, strengthens your arguments by showing supporting evidence, allows readers to verify your claims, and demonstrates your research skills.

The citation style you use depends on your field of study or your instructor's requirements. Common styles include: APA (psychology, education, social sciences), MLA (humanities, literature), Chicago (history, arts), IEEE (engineering, computer science), and Vancouver (medicine, health sciences).

A citation refers to a specific source you quoted or paraphrased in your work. A bibliography (or reference list) is the complete list of all sources cited at the end of your paper. Some styles also allow annotated bibliographies that include brief descriptions of each source.

Cite whenever you use someone else's ideas, data, or words. This includes direct quotes, paraphrased information, statistics, and unique concepts. Generally, academic papers include citations every few sentences when presenting research. Your own analysis and conclusions don't need citations.

Paste a link, DOI or ISBN into the box and press Add Citation. Check the details it finds and correct anything that is wrong. To type a source in yourself, choose Manual. Your list is in APA until you choose another style.

URL, DOI, and ISBN lookups collect available source metadata such as authors, dates, and titles. Source records can be incomplete or incorrect, so review and edit the metadata before using the formatted citation.

Yes! When you create a free account, all your citations are automatically saved in projects. You can organize citations by assignment, star important projects for quick access, and return to them anytime.

Citation Creation supports websites, books, journal articles, newspapers, magazines, videos, podcasts, and more. Each source type has tailored fields to capture the specific information required by different citation styles.

Yes. Choose Generative AI as the source type, or paste the link that Share in the AI tool gives you. APA, MLA and Chicago each have a form for citing AI, and that is the form we print. Most other styles have none, so the form says what the style asks for instead. See how to cite ChatGPT and other AI tools.

Yes, at any time. Press the pencil on its card, change the authors, dates, title or any other detail, and press Update Citation.

In-text citations appear within your paper where you reference a source, either in brackets (like "(Smith, 2023)") or as part of a sentence (like "Smith (2023) found that"). Reference list entries are the full citations at the end of your paper that provide complete source details. Both are necessary for proper academic writing.

Open the copy menu on a citation and choose Add a page number, or turn on the In-text or Footnote switch and select Add a page number. Type the page, and the citation changes as you type, so "(Smith, 2023)" becomes "(Smith, 2023, p. 23)". Then copy it. If the number counts something else, such as a paragraph, a chapter or the time in a video, choose that instead of Page. The page is used for that copy only and is not saved, because you cite the same source at different pages in different places.

That is a narrative citation, such as "Smith (2023) found that". Open the copy menu on a citation and choose Copy narrative citation, or turn on the In-text switch to see it under each citation, below the form in brackets. It is offered in styles that cite by author, such as APA, MLA, Chicago author-date and Harvard. If you add a page number in APA or MLA, the page is given on its own, as "(p. 23)" in APA and "(23)" in MLA, because those guides put it after the quotation rather than beside the name.

Open Writing order from your project and list your footnotes in the order your paper has them, each with its source and page. It works out which footnote is the first for each source, which are short later footnotes, where Ibid goes, and the footnote number AGLC and OSCOLA put in "(n 5)". Where a footnote of your paper cites nothing from your list, give the next one your paper's own number. In a numbered style such as IEEE, it numbers your sources in the order you first cite them. If adding, moving or removing a footnote changes others you have already copied, the page marks them and says "Copy them again." Writing order is free in every project, on every plan.

A DOI (Digital Object Identifier) is a unique alphanumeric string assigned to digital content like journal articles. It provides a permanent link to the source and is preferred over URLs when available. DOIs look like: 10.1000/xyz123

An ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is a unique identifier for books. You can find it on the back cover or copyright page. Enter the ISBN in Citation Creation, and we'll automatically fetch the book's details including title, author, publisher, and publication date.

Citation Creation handles multiple authors automatically. Just add each author separately, and we'll format them according to your chosen style. Most styles use "et al." for sources with many authors in in-text citations while listing all authors in the reference list.

Sources sometimes lack author names or dates. Citation Creation uses the available metadata and the selected style, which may use a placeholder such as "n.d." (no date) or start with the title when there is no author. Review the result against your requirements.

Projects are containers for organizing your citations. Create a project for each paper, assignment, or research topic. Each project has its own citation style and list of sources, making it easy to manage multiple papers simultaneously.

Each plan includes a different project limit. Upgrade to Pro or Educator for more coursework or research projects. See our pricing page for current limits.

Yes. You can create a copy of a citation in another project. The original remains in its current project; moving or deleting the original as part of that action is not currently supported.

Click the star icon next to any project to mark it as a favorite. Starred projects appear at the top of your project list for quick access. This is great for keeping your current assignments front and center.

All plans include export to PDF, Word (.docx), BibTeX, RIS, CSL-JSON, and plain text. BibTeX and RIS are great for importing into reference managers like Zotero, Mendeley, or EndNote. CSL-JSON is the file Pandoc and Quarto read a bibliography from.

Open your project and click the "Export" button. Select "Word (.docx)" from the options. Your citations will download as a formatted Word document with proper hanging indents and formatting ready to paste into your paper.

Yes! All plans include BibTeX and RIS export. These formats are compatible with reference managers like Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote, as well as LaTeX documents for academic publishing.

Yes. Every plan exports a project as CSL-JSON, the file Pandoc and Quarto read a bibliography from. Each source in it has the same key as in the BibTeX export, so you can swap one file for the other without changing your citations. For Zotero, use RIS.

When you copy individual citations, italics and other text formatting are preserved. For best results with multiple citations, use the Word or PDF export to maintain consistent formatting including hanging indents.

Yes! The export feature exports all citations in your project at once, formatted as a complete reference list. The order is the one your citation style requires, worked out by the style itself. Styles differ in how they order a reference list, so it is not always alphabetical, and your project page names the style that set the order you see.

The free plan includes 50 citations a month across 10 projects, all available citation styles, and export to PDF, Word, BibTeX, RIS, CSL-JSON, and plain text, with your notes in your exports. It checks 5 sources a month for retractions and broken links, and imports BibTeX and RIS files. No credit card required. See our pricing page for current limits.

Pro includes everything in Free plus more citations and projects, 100 source checks a month, the full Relationship Map, Custom Formatting and email support. See our pricing page for current limits.

The Educator plan is designed for teachers, professors, and instructors who need higher citation and project limits. It includes the available Pro features and dedicated support. See our pricing page for current limits.

Some websites block automated access or require login. If a URL doesn't work, try entering the citation details manually. Make sure the URL is complete and publicly accessible. Paywalled content may require manual entry.

Press the pencil on its card to correct its details, such as the authors, dates and title. A lookup can find details that are incomplete or wrong, so check each citation. If the details are right and the citation is still wrong, please contact us.

Each plan has a project limit. You can delete old projects to make room, or upgrade to Pro or Educator for more. Check the pricing page for details on each plan's limits.

We appreciate bug reports! Visit our contact page to send us details about the issue. Include the URL or source you were citing, the citation style, and what went wrong.

Yes! Citation Creation is fully responsive and works on smartphones and tablets. While we recommend a desktop for writing papers, you can create and manage citations on the go from any device with a web browser.