To convert a DOI to a citation, paste the DOI (or its doi.org link) into a DOI lookup, pick your style, and then check the three things publisher records often get wrong: capitalization, missing editors and odd page numbers. Our free DOI to citation generator does the lookup in your browser: paste up to 20 DOIs, choose APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago, IEEE, Harvard, BibTeX or RIS, and copy the result with italics intact. It's free, needs no account, and the lookup goes from your browser straight to Crossref and doi.org, not through our server.
Every citation below is real output from that tool, run on November 2, 2026 against live Crossref and DataCite records. Where it needed a manual fix, we say why.
What a DOI actually gives you
A DOI such as 10.1038/nature14539 is a permanent ID for a paper, chapter, book, dataset or piece of software: 10., a registrant prefix, a slash and a suffix. With it the publisher deposits metadata (authors, title, journal, volume, issue, pages, year) at Crossref (most journals and books) or DataCite (datasets, Zenodo). A citation generator only rearranges that record into your style, so the output is as good as what the publisher typed in, and a quick check afterwards matters more than which generator you use.
How to convert a DOI to a citation, step by step
1. Copy the DOI in any form
No cleanup needed. The tool accepts all of these, one per line:
10.1038/nature14539(bare DOI)https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539or the olderhttps://dx.doi.org/...linkdoi:10.1109/CVPR.2016.90orDOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-24574-4_28.with the trailing period from a reference list- Percent-encoded links such as
https://dx.doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41586-020-2649-2, where%2Fis an encoded slash (more on that in our guide to URL encoding)
2. Paste it and pick a style
Open the DOI to citation tool, paste one DOI per line (up to 20 per batch) and choose the style. The style menu remembers your last choice. For APA there is an extra box, Sentence case for titles (APA), which we'll come back to.
3. Generate, then copy
Each result shows the full reference, the in-text citation (or the short note for Chicago notes and bibliography), the work type, and whether the record came from Crossref or doi.org. Copy and Copy all put both plain text and formatted text on the clipboard, so journal names stay italic when you paste into Word or Google Docs. With several DOIs in an author-date style, the list is sorted alphabetically, as a reference list should be; in IEEE it stays numbered in the order you entered.
4. Check the record against the article
Spend 20 seconds per reference on the pitfalls below. It's the step most people skip and the one a marker or editor notices.
Worked example: one DOI in six styles
Input: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539, the 2015 Nature review "Deep learning". The tool returned (italics shown as in the copied text):
- APA 7: LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y., & Hinton, G. (2015). Deep learning. Nature, 521(7553), 436–444. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539. In-text: (LeCun et al., 2015)
- MLA 9: LeCun, Yann, et al. “Deep Learning.” Nature, vol. 521, no. 7553, 2015, pp. 436–44, https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539.
- Chicago (author-date): LeCun, Yann, Yoshua Bengio, and Geoffrey Hinton. 2015. “Deep Learning.” Nature 521 (7553): 436–444. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539.
- Harvard: LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y. and Hinton, G. (2015) ‘Deep learning’, Nature, 521(7553), pp. 436–444. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539.
- IEEE (second DOI in a batch of two): [2] Y. LeCun, Y. Bengio, and G. Hinton, “Deep learning,” Nature, vol. 521, no. 7553, pp. 436–444, May 2015, doi: 10.1038/nature14539.
Notice what each style changes: APA uses initials, & and no period after the DOI; MLA writes the first author's full name, switches to "et al." from three authors and shortens the page range to 436–44; IEEE puts initials first and adds the month. MLA and Chicago use headline capitalization for English article titles, so the tool turns "Deep learning" into "Deep Learning" there, keeping short words such as "of", "and" and "the" lowercase. APA and Harvard keep the capitalization the publisher registered.
For LaTeX or a reference manager, BibTeX gives:
@article{lecun2015deep,
author = {LeCun, Yann and Bengio, Yoshua and Hinton, Geoffrey},
title = {Deep learning},
journal = {Nature},
year = {2015},
volume = {521},
number = {7553},
pages = {436--444},
publisher = {Springer Science and Business Media LLC},
issn = {0028-0836},
doi = {10.1038/nature14539},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539}
}RIS output for the same DOI starts with TY - JOUR and splits the pages into SP - 436 and EP - 444. Download .bib and Download .ris save the whole batch for Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley or JabRef.
More real examples, including the messy ones
A paper with 26 authors (APA's 20-author rule)
Input https://dx.doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41586-020-2649-2 (the NumPy paper). APA 7 lists up to 20 authors; with 21 or more you give the first 19, an ellipsis, then the last author. The tool did that automatically: Harris, C. R., Millman, K. J., van der Walt, S. J., ... Peterson, P., . . . Oliphant, T. E. (2020). Array programming with NumPy. It also kept the lowercase particles in van der Walt and del Río.
A Title Case title (the sentence case box)
10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 is registered as "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False". APA wants sentence case, so with the box ticked the tool returned: Ioannidis, J. P. A. (2005). Why most published research findings are false. PLoS Medicine, 2(8), Article e124. The box only changes English titles written in Title Case. It keeps acronyms (DNA, COVID), words with inner capitals and common proper nouns: 10.1056/NEJMoa2001017 came out as "A novel coronavirus from patients with pneumonia in China, 2019". Titles in other languages, such as German ones, are left as registered. Rarer names can still be lowercased, so read the title once. The example also shows the APA rule for e-only journals: no page range, so "Article e124".
A conference chapter with no editors in the record
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-24574-4_28. (U-Net, with the stray period) gave: Ronneberger, O., Fischer, P., & Brox, T. (2015). U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation. In Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention – MICCAI 2015 (pp. 234–241). Springer International Publishing.
APA wants the editors after "In", but Springer's chapter record has none. The fix: the book's DOI is the chapter DOI without the _28. Looking up 10.1007/978-3-319-24574-4 returned the editors: Navab, N., Hornegger, J., Wells, W. M., & Frangi, A. F. (Eds.). Add them by hand: In N. Navab, J. Hornegger, W. M. Wells, & A. F. Frangi (Eds.), Medical Image Computing... When a chapter record has no editors, the tool shows "Not in the DOI record: editors" under the reference, so you know when to do this.
A dataset or software DOI (DataCite)
10.5281/zenodo.3242074 isn't in Crossref, so the tool fell back to doi.org and returned: Project Binder. (2019). Simple requirements.txt based example for repo2docker [Computer software]. Zenodo. The record stores the creator as family name "Binder", given name "Project". The tool recognizes words such as Project, Team, Consortium, Institute or University and writes the group name in full, as group authors should be. Check group names without such a word.
Typos, ISBNs and duplicates in one batch
We pasted 10.1038/nature1453 (one digit missing), an ISBN, 10.1038/NATURE14539 and the same DOI as a link. Result: "1 of 3 found". The ISBN got "doesn't contain a DOI", the typo got "was not found in Crossref or the DOI registry", and the uppercase copy was skipped as a duplicate, because DOIs are case-insensitive. Merging lists from coauthors? Run them through the duplicate lines remover first (see our guide to cleaning lists).
Pitfalls to check in every generated citation
- Capitalization. Titles arrive as the publisher typed them. For English titles the tool applies headline case in MLA and Chicago; for APA, tick sentence case. Check rare proper nouns either way. Our case converter has a Sentence case mode for titles you fix by hand.
- Article numbers stored as pages. Revista de Saúde Pública (
10.11606/s1518-8787.2020054001461) deposits its article number 92 in the page field, so APA came out as "54, 92". A single number can't be told apart from a one-page article, so write "54, Article 92". Numbers starting with e (e124) and long numbers are treated as article numbers, and supplement pages such as S183 stay pages. Revista Española de Salud Pública came out as "Article 202004019", but the journal prints "e202004019"; the "e" is missing from the record itself, so add it. - Labels inside fields. Some publishers type "Vol." or "N°" into the volume field;
10.3917/popsoc.597.0001has "N° 597". The tool removes such labels, so APA prints "Population & Sociétés, 597(2), 1–4". - Same author, same year. Two works by the same authors in the same year need 2015a and 2015b in APA, Harvard and Chicago author-date. Paste them in one batch and the tool adds the letters in the list and in the in-text citation:
10.1001/jama.294.2.218and10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124became Ioannidis (2005a) and (2005b), ordered by title. Across separate batches it can't know, so add the letters by hand. - Missing pieces. If the record lacks authors, year, journal, volume or pages, the tool shows a "Not in the DOI record" warning under that reference. Take the missing detail from the article's first page, not from memory.
Citing in other languages
The connecting words ("and", "In", "edited by", "Available at", "n.d.") follow the language of the page: here they are English, on the Spanish page the tool writes "y", "En" and "Disponible en", on the German page "und", "Hrsg." and "Verfügbar unter". A menu under the style switches them back to English; "et al." stays Latin. Non-English records work fine: 10.1007/s11618-019-00909-w came out as Fleischer, J., Leutner, D., Brand, M., Fischer, H., Lang, M., Schmiemann, P., & Sumfleth, E. (2019). Vorhersage des Studienabbruchs in naturwissenschaftlich-technischen Studiengängen. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft, 22(5), 1077–1097. Accents survive; when a journal registers two titles (German and English here), the first is used.
Related free tools
- Case converter: sentence case for titles.
- Duplicate lines remover and list alphabetizer: tidy merged reference lists.
- URL decoder: read a percent-encoded DOI link.
All of them are free and need no account. Ready to try it? Paste your DOIs into the free DOI to citation generator.
Frequently asked questions
How do I convert a DOI to an APA citation?
Paste the DOI or its doi.org link into a DOI to citation tool, choose APA 7 and tick sentence case. The reference ends with the DOI as a link (https://doi.org/...) and no period after it. Then check capitalization, editors for chapters and the page or article number.
Is a DOI-generated citation always correct?
No. It is exactly as accurate as the publisher's record. In our tests the common problems were chapters with no editors (the tool warns), article numbers stored as plain page numbers, and letters missing from the record, like the "e" in e202004019. The tool fixes title capitalization for MLA and Chicago, Vol. or N° labels and 2015a/2015b letters, but read each reference once.
Can I convert several DOIs at once?
Yes. Paste up to 20 DOIs, one per line, in any format. Author-date styles come back sorted alphabetically, IEEE stays in the order entered, and you can copy them all or download a .bib or .ris file.
Does it work for datasets and software?
Yes. DOIs that aren't in Crossref, such as Zenodo or other DataCite DOIs, are looked up through doi.org, and APA adds the [Data set] or [Computer software] label. Group authors such as Project Binder are recognized; check unusual group names.
Where do I find the DOI of an article?
Look on the article's first page, in the header or footer of the PDF, or on the publisher's page, usually written as doi: 10.xxxx/... or https://doi.org/10.xxxx/.... Database records and reference lists also show it.
Is my reading list sent to your server?
No. The lookup runs in your browser and asks Crossref and doi.org directly. Our server never sees the DOIs you paste.
