Vancouver style
How to cite a chapter in an edited book in Vancouver style
A chapter has two sets of names — the chapter authors and the book editors — and getting the two the wrong way round is the single most common reference-list error.
THE FORMAT
A chapter in an edited book in Vancouver, at a glance
#. Chapter Author AA. Title of the chapter. In: Editor AA, Editor BB, editors. Title of the book. Edition. Place: Publisher; Year. p. ##-##.
4. Byrne KJ. Antimicrobial stewardship on the surgical ward. In: Lindgren M, Sato H, editors. Handbook of hospital-acquired infection. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer; 2021. p. 204-27.
Ward-level stewardship rounds reduce broad-spectrum days more reliably than formulary restriction.⁴
In prose: Byrne⁴ argues that stewardship fails when it is owned by pharmacy alone.
5. Oduya P. Sepsis recognition in the emergency department. In: Almeida RT, editor. Acute care pathways [Internet]. Bristol: Severn Academic Press; 2023 [cited 2025 Mar 4]. p. 88-104. Available from: https://severnacademic.org/acp/ch5
In text: Screening at triage detects roughly a third more cases.⁵
Copyeditor formats APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE automatically — cite a source once and the references builds itself. See how citations work .
BEFORE YOU FORMAT
What Vancouver needs from a chapter in an edited book
Elements to collect
- Chapter author or authors
- Year of publication
- Chapter title
- Editor or editors of the whole book
- Book title
- Page range of the chapter
- Publisher
Rules specific to this entry
- “In:” with a capital I and a colon separates the chapter from its container. The editors follow in the same surname-then-initials form, closed by “editors.” — spelled out, not abbreviated to “eds.” as IEEE abbreviates to “Eds.”
- The chapter page range is prefixed “p.” — a single p, even for a range — and contracted: “p. 204-27”. IEEE would write “pp. 204–227”; Vancouver uses neither the doubled p nor the en dash.
- The chapter title comes first and the book title second, mirroring the printed table of contents. If the names standing before “In:” are the editors, the entry has been built backward.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element Vancouver needs for a chapter in an edited book: Chapter author or authors; Year of publication; Chapter title; Editor or editors of the whole book.
Build the references entry
Arrange those details in the Vancouver order: #. Chapter Author AA. Title of the chapter. In: Editor AA, Editor BB, editors. Title of the book. Edition. Place: Publisher; Year. p. ##-##.
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as Ward-level stewardship rounds reduce broad-spectrum days more reliably than formulary restriction.⁴ — or work the same reference into your sentence as Byrne⁴ argues that stewardship fails when it is owned by pharmacy alone..
Check it against the exceptions
“In:” with a capital I and a colon separates the chapter from its container. The editors follow in the same surname-then-initials form, closed by “editors.” — spelled out, not abbreviated to “eds.” as IEEE abbreviates to “Eds.”
Vancouver RULES
The conventions behind every Vancouver entry
Citing Medicine (NLM), 2nd ed. — the reference standard behind Vancouver is the authority. Where a journal or department publishes its own house rules, those win — check your submission guidelines before the references is final.
The rules that apply across every source — author order, capitalization, how the references is sorted, and where Vancouver entries most often go wrong — are collected on the Vancouver style guide.
The same chapter in an edited book in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about Vancouver and book chapters
What if the chapter in an edited book has no author?
Start the entry with the title and keep the number you already assigned it. A numeric references never re-sorts for a missing author, so the entry stays exactly where it is.
What do I need before I can cite a chapter in an edited book?
Chapter author or authors, Year of publication, Chapter title, and the rest of the elements listed above. A chapter has two sets of names — the chapter authors and the book editors — and getting the two the wrong way round is the single most common reference-list error.
Is there anything unusual about a chapter in an edited book in Vancouver?
“In:” with a capital I and a colon separates the chapter from its container. The editors follow in the same surname-then-initials form, closed by “editors.” — spelled out, not abbreviated to “eds.” as IEEE abbreviates to “Eds.”
What else catches people out here?
The chapter page range is prefixed “p.” — a single p, even for a range — and contracted: “p. 204-27”. IEEE would write “pp. 204–227”; Vancouver uses neither the doubled p nor the en dash.
Can I reformat this chapter in an edited book in another style later?
By hand, you would retype the entry — the element order, punctuation and italics all differ between styles. In Copyeditor, sources are stored as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole reference list at once.
Cite it once
and never reformat it again
Copyeditor keeps sources as structured data, so switching between APA, MLA, Chicago and IEEE reformats every citation and the whole references at once.
