Vancouver
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Vancouver is the numbered reference style many medical journals ask for. It follows the ICMJE Recommendations and the US National Library of Medicine’s Citing Medicine: sources are numbered in the order your text first cites them, and the list at the end runs in that order.
Every example is a real source, checked where it was published. Check the finer points against the guide your course or journal uses. Review formatting support and known limitations.
Vancouver references, part by part
Real sources, set as Citation Creation sets them in Vancouver. Choose one to see what each part follows.
- 1.
- its number, in citing order
- Watson JD, Crick FHC.
- no full stops in initials
- Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid.
- no quotes, no italics
- Nature.
- a one-word journal stays whole
- 1953 Apr 25;171(4356):737-8.
- date;volume(issue):pages
- In your text
- (1)
- 1.
- Sources are numbered in the order your text first cites them, and the list runs in that order. The first source you cite is 1.
- Watson JD, Crick FHC.
- Each author is the surname, then the initials with no full stops or spaces, and a comma between authors. Citing Medicine allows two initials at most, so Crick is Crick FH, as PubMed lists him. We print every initial you give, so cut the third by hand.
- Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid.
- The article title is plain, with a capital only on the first word and on names. A colon comes before a subtitle, which starts with a small letter like the rest of the title.
- Nature.
- Journal names take the NLM abbreviation, with no full stops, as N Engl J Med. A name of one word, such as Nature, is not shortened.
- 1953 Apr 25;171(4356):737-8.
- The year, the month in three letters and the day, then a semicolon, the volume, the issue in brackets, a colon and the pages, with no spaces. The last page drops the digits it shares with the first: 737-8.
- Lee H.
- surname, then initials
- To kill a mockingbird.
- capital on the first word only
- Philadelphia:
- the city, then a colon
- J. B. Lippincott;
- publisher, then a semicolon
- 1960.
- the year alone
- Lee H.
- The author is the surname, then up to two initials with no full stops, and a full stop at the end: Harper Lee is Lee H.
- To kill a mockingbird.
- A book title takes a capital only on the first word and on names, and is set in plain type like the rest of the entry. An edition, such as 2nd ed., would follow it.
- Philadelphia:
- Give the city of publication, then a colon. Add the state or country where a lesser-known city could be confused, as in Cambridge (MA). Where the title page names two cities, give the first.
- J. B. Lippincott;
- The publisher is written as the book gives it, though a well-known name may be shortened: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. may become Wiley. A semicolon leads to the date.
- 1960.
- A book needs only the year it was published, with a full stop after it.
- World Health Organization.
- who wrote it
- Climate change [Internet].
- [Internet] after the title
- 2023 [cited 2026 Oct 15].
- year, then the day you read it
- Available from: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health
- no full stop after the address
- World Health Organization.
- Citing Medicine puts an organisation that wrote and published a page after the title, as its publisher, with its city: Geneva: World Health Organization;. We put it first, so move it by hand.
- Climate change [Internet].
- The page’s title, with a capital on the first word only, then Internet in square brackets to show you read it online. The full stop goes after the bracket.
- 2023 [cited 2026 Oct 15].
- The year it was published, then the date you read it in square brackets: year, month in three letters, day. A page that shows an update date gives that first, as in [updated 2001 Nov 20; cited 2002 Aug 12].
- Available from: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-and-health
- “Available from:” and the whole address, with no full stop unless the address ends in a slash.
Vancouver in-text citations
Cited again, same number
A source keeps the number it was given when you first cited it. If Watson and Crick are (1), they are (1) every time after, and the list has one entry for them.
Several sources in one place
The ICMJE and Citing Medicine do not say how to join several numbers, so follow your journal. University guides put them in one pair of brackets, with commas, and join a run with a hyphen, as in Imperial College London’s guide.
(6-9, 13, 15)
Tables and figure legends
Sources in a table or a figure legend take numbers in brackets too, in the same sequence as the text. A source cited only in a table takes the next number where the text first mentions that table: if the text has reached (4) when it first names Table 1, a new source there is (5).
Names are optional, the number is not
The number alone is enough: Climate change affects health in many ways (3). You can name the authors as well, with the number after their names.
Watson and Crick (1) proposed a double helix.
Personal communications stay in the text
A letter, email or conversation gets no number and no entry in the list. Put the name and date in brackets in your sentence, as Citing Medicine shows. The ICMJE asks you to cite one only for information found nowhere public, with the person’s written permission.
(2003 letter from RS Grant to me; unreferenced, see “Notes”)
List only what you read
Your list names the works you read. If you met Watson and Crick only as quoted in a textbook, find their article and read it. If you cannot, list the book you read, not the article.
Before you hand it in
Numbered in the order you cite
Sources are numbered in the order you first cite them, and a source keeps its number when you cite it again. ICMJE puts the number in round brackets in the text: (1).
Journal names, shortened the NLM way
A journal name takes the abbreviation the NLM Catalog gives, such as N Engl J Med for The New England Journal of Medicine, and a one-word name such as Nature stays whole. We print the name you give, so look yours up and type the short form in.
Six authors, then et al.
With more than six authors, the ICMJE samples list the first six, then a comma and “et al.”, and so does Citation Creation. Citing Medicine itself lists every author and allows a cut at three or six, so follow your journal or course.
Read it online? Say so
Citing Medicine asks you to cite the version you saw: an article read online gets [Internet] after the journal name, the date you read it, as [cited 2007 Jan 4], and “Available from:” with its address. Fill in Date Accessed and the [cited] date is added.
Pages, shortened
Page numbers drop the digits they repeat and take a hyphen: 737-8, not 737–738.
The year comes first
Give the year, then the month in three letters and the day: 1953 Apr 25.
Finding a journal’s NLM abbreviation
Vancouver shortens each journal’s name the way the US National Library of Medicine does. We print the name you give, so look the short form up and type it into Journal Name.
- Search the NLM Catalog’s journal list (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/journals) for the journal’s full title, a short form you have seen, or its ISSN.
- Open the journal’s record and copy its NLM Title Abbreviation exactly: no full stops, and NLM’s capitals, even where the journal now writes its name another way.
- Check the record’s dates, and cite the name the journal had when the article came out. Citing Medicine gives Br Med J, not BMJ, for articles from 1987 and earlier.
- Not listed? Shorten each word with ISO’s List of Title Word Abbreviations, or write the name in full. Whichever you choose, do the same for every journal in your list.
- The New England Journal of Medicine
- N Engl J Med
- JAMA
- JAMA
- BMJ
- BMJ
- The Lancet
- Lancet
- Annals of Internal Medicine
- Ann Intern Med
- Nature
- Nature
- PLOS One
- PLoS One
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
- Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
- Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews
- Cochrane Database Syst Rev
- American Journal of Public Health
- Am J Public Health
- Journal of Advanced Nursing
- J Adv Nurs
- The Medical Journal of Australia
- Med J Aust
A name of one word, such as Nature, is never shortened, and Citing Medicine drops a subtitle: JAMA: the Journal of the American Medical Association is JAMA.
Why Vancouver varies
The ICMJE, a group of medical journal editors once known as the Vancouver Group, points authors to the National Library of Medicine for its reference rules: the sample references and the book Citing Medicine. Citing Medicine lists accepted options beside its own practice, such as three or six authors before et al., full stops in journal names, or a journal name written in full. Journals and universities choose among them and add their own.
There are over 30 versions of Vancouver to choose from in Citation Creation. Here is one article in five of them.
- Vancouver
-
1.Watson JD, Crick FHC. Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature. 1953 Apr 25;171(4356):737-8.
In the text(1)
The number in round brackets, as the ICMJE asks.
- Vancouver (brackets)
-
1.Watson JD, Crick FHC. Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature. 1953 Apr 25;171(4356):737-8.
In the text[1]
The same entry, with the number in square brackets.
- Vancouver (superscript)
-
1.Watson JD, Crick FHC. Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature. 1953 Apr 25;171(4356):737-8.
In the text1
The same entry, with a raised number.
- Vancouver (superscript, only year in date, no issue numbers)
-
1.Watson JD, Crick FHC. Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature. 1953;171:737-8.
In the text1
The year alone and no issue, an option the NLM samples allow for a journal whose pages run on through the whole volume.
- Imperial College London
-
1.Watson JD, Crick FHC. Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid. Nature. 1953;171(4356): 737–738. https://doi.org/10.1038/171737a0.
In the text(1)
The journal in italics, the year alone, the pages in full and the DOI at the end. Imperial’s own guide joins the pages with a hyphen, 397-399, so change the dash by hand.
They differ where this article cannot show it, too. With seven or more authors these five list six, then et al. Vancouver (brackets, no “et al.”) lists every author, as Citing Medicine itself does, and Elsevier’s version for three or more authors lists three. Use the version your journal, course or university names, and choose it with Change style.
How Citation Creation handles Vancouver
- Publishers often send titles with a capital on every main word. When a title reads that way, the form offers to change it to sentence case, with the subtitle after a colon starting small, and shows you the result first, so you can check that names keep their capitals.
- Page ranges take a hyphen, and every month is three letters, Jun, Jul and Sep among them, as the NLM samples print them.
- Every initial you give is printed, so Francis H. C. Crick is Crick FHC. Citing Medicine allows two at most, Crick FH, so cut the third by hand.
- A web page’s organisation is printed first, as its author. Citing Medicine names it after the title, as the publisher, with its city: Climate change [Internet]. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2023 [cited 2026 Oct 15]. Move it by hand.
- Cite several sources in one place on the Writing order tab, free with an account, and they print in one pair of brackets, in number order: (1,2,3). A run is not shortened to (1-3), so shorten it by hand if your journal asks.
- A page number you add is not printed in the text: the citation stays (1).
- The DOI is not printed. The NLM samples put it at the end, as doi: 10.1038/171737a0, so add it there if your journal wants it.
- Each part of a hyphenated first name gets an initial: Hiu-fai Fong is Fong HF.
How to cite each source in Vancouver
Quick Facts
- Full Name:
- Vancouver
- Citation Format:
- Numeric
- Style Class:
- In-Text Citations
- Fields:
- Medicine
- Documentation:
- View style guidelines
Journal-Specific Variations
These styles are based on Vancouver with modifications for specific journals or publications.
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