Vancouver style
How to cite a journal article in Vancouver style
Journal articles carry the most metadata of any source — volume, issue, page range, and a DOI — and each style orders and punctuates them differently.
THE FORMAT
A journal article in Vancouver, at a glance
#. Author AA, Author BB, Author CC, Author DD, Author EE, Author FF, et al. Title of the article. Abbrev Journal Title. Year Mon;Volume(Issue):Pages. doi: 10.xxxx/xxxxx
4. Almeida RT, Byrne KJ, Oduya P, Lindgren M, Sato H, Whitcombe DA, et al. Early mobilization after elective colorectal surgery: a stepped-wedge cluster trial. BMJ Qual Saf. 2024 Apr;33(4):241-9. doi: 10.1136/bmjqs-2023-016842
Early mobilization shortened median length of stay by 1.4 days without increasing readmissions.⁴
In prose: Almeida et al.⁴ report a median reduction of 1.4 days across eleven surgical units.
5. Ferreira LM, Nkemelu D, Sato H. Wearable-derived sleep regularity and 30-day readmission: a prospective cohort study. PLoS One. 2023;18(9):e0291744. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0291744
In text: Sleep regularity predicted readmission better than total sleep time.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 journal article
Elements to collect
- All author names, in the order printed on the article
- Year of publication
- Article title
- Journal name (in full, not the abbreviation, unless the style asks for it)
- Volume and issue number
- Page range
- DOI, or a stable URL when there is no DOI
Rules specific to this entry
- Six names are printed here and then “et al.” — count the names rather than trusting the look of the list. Citing Medicine permits every author to be listed; the ICMJE cut at six is what most journals adopt.
- The tail is “2024 Apr;33(4):241-9” with no spaces after the semicolon or the colon. The month appears when a journal paginates by issue rather than continuously through a volume; giving year, volume, issue, and pages alone is accepted everywhere.
- The page range contracts to 241-9, and the separator is a hyphen. Writing 241–249 with an en dash is an IEEE or APA reflex.
- The journal name is the NLM Catalog abbreviation with no periods — “BMJ Qual Saf”, not “B.M.J. Qual. Saf.” and not the full title. Strict NLM style leaves it unitalicized.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element Vancouver needs for a journal article: All author names, in the order printed on the article; Year of publication; Article title; Journal name (in full, not the abbreviation, unless the style asks for it).
Build the references entry
Arrange those details in the Vancouver order: #. Author AA, Author BB, Author CC, Author DD, Author EE, Author FF, et al. Title of the article. Abbrev Journal Title. Year Mon;Volume(Issue):Pages. doi: 10.xxxx/xxxxx
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as Early mobilization shortened median length of stay by 1.4 days without increasing readmissions.⁴ — or work the same reference into your sentence as Almeida et al.⁴ report a median reduction of 1.4 days across eleven surgical units..
Check it against the exceptions
Six names are printed here and then “et al.” — count the names rather than trusting the look of the list. Citing Medicine permits every author to be listed; the ICMJE cut at six is what most journals adopt.
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 journal article in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about Vancouver and journal articles
What if the journal article 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 journal article?
All author names, in the order printed on the article, Year of publication, Article title, and the rest of the elements listed above. Journal articles carry the most metadata of any source — volume, issue, page range, and a DOI — and each style orders and punctuates them differently.
Is there anything unusual about a journal article in Vancouver?
Six names are printed here and then “et al.” — count the names rather than trusting the look of the list. Citing Medicine permits every author to be listed; the ICMJE cut at six is what most journals adopt.
What else catches people out here?
The tail is “2024 Apr;33(4):241-9” with no spaces after the semicolon or the colon. The month appears when a journal paginates by issue rather than continuously through a volume; giving year, volume, issue, and pages alone is accepted everywhere.
Can I reformat this journal article 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.
