Chicago citation generator
Paste DOIs, PubMed IDs or your existing reference list, up to 100 at a time, and get Chicago author-date references (Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition), the Chicago system used in the sciences and social sciences. The examples below are produced by this tool from the Chicago quick guide’s records.
Free · no signup · works instantly. References are looked up, then formatted in your browser; nothing you paste is stored.
The rules this generator applies
- Authors: the first author surname first, the others given name first, with "and" before the last. With seven or more authors, list the first three, then "et al."
- The year follows the authors, then the article title in quotation marks.
- Journal articles: the journal name in italics, then volume, "no." and issue, a colon and the page range (Journal of Human Capital 11, no. 1: 1–34), then the DOI link.
- Books: title in italics, edition, then the publisher.
- The list is sorted alphabetically by the first author’s surname.
- This is the author-date system only. Chicago’s notes and bibliography system, used in history and the humanities, is a different format the generator does not produce.
Examples from the style guide
Each example is the guide's own reference, entered as data and produced by this generator.
- Journal article with a DOI (Chicago author-date quick guide record)
- Keng, Shao-Hsun, Chun-Hung Lin, and Peter F. Orazem. 2017. “Expanding College Access in Taiwan, 1978–2014: Effects on Graduate Quality and Income Inequality.” Journal of Human Capital 11, no. 1: 1–34. https://doi.org/10.1086/690235.
- Book with an edition (APA Style website record, in Chicago author-date)
- Jackson, Lynne M. 2019. The psychology of prejudice: From attitudes to social action. 2nd ed. American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/0000168-000.
Other styles: AMA citation generator, Vancouver reference generator, IEEE citation generator, Nature reference style generator, APA citation generator, Harvard referencing generator. All seven styles are on the Reference Formatter. Checking a list you have not verified? The free Reference Checker finds retracted papers and invented citations.
Paste references
DOIs, PubMed IDs, a plain-text list, BibTeX, RIS or CSL-JSON, up to 100 at a time.
Check the style
The style is already set; switch to any of the seven styles if your journal asks for another.
Copy or download
Copy with italics and bold kept, or download Word (.rtf), plain text, BibTeX or RIS.
What this tool does not do
- • It does not hold journal-specific variants of the style; the journal notes below list the ones we know, and your target journal’s instructions have the rest.
- • Article titles keep the source record’s capitalisation; it does not convert to sentence or title case.
- • A plain-text reference is matched to a Crossref record by title and author. A reference with no confident match is listed, not guessed.
- • It does not check whether a reference is retracted or supports your claim. The Reference Checker and Citation Claim Checker do that.
Frequently asked questions
Is this Chicago 17th or 18th edition?
The 18th edition, author-date system. Among the changes, works with seven or more authors list the first three followed by et al.
Does it do Chicago footnotes?
No. It produces the author-date reference list. The notes and bibliography system uses footnotes and a differently ordered bibliography entry.
Can I make a Chicago reference from a DOI?
Yes. Paste the DOI on its own and the generator builds the reference from its Crossref record, ending with the DOI link.
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