Vancouver style
How to cite a report in Vancouver style
Reports from governments, NGOs, and think tanks usually have a corporate author rather than a person, and often a report number that has to be preserved exactly.
THE FORMAT
A report in Vancouver, at a glance
#. Issuing Organization. Title of the report [Internet]. Place: Publisher; Year [cited Year Mon DD]. Report No.: XXX. Available from: URL
4. National Board of Health Outcomes. Antimicrobial resistance in primary care: national surveillance 2023 [Internet]. Stockholm: NBHO; 2024 [cited 2025 Mar 4]. Report No.: NBHO-2024-07. Available from: https://www.nbho.se/reports/amr-2023
Resistance to first-line agents rose in every region except the northernmost.⁴
In prose: National surveillance⁴ recorded rising resistance to first-line agents in every region but one.
5. Whitcombe DA, Sato H. Cost-effectiveness of community anticoagulation clinics. Ottawa: Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health; 2021. Report No.: CADTH-HTA-0442. Sponsored by the Ministry of Health.
In text: Community clinics dominated hospital-based follow-up on cost per QALY.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 report
Elements to collect
- Issuing organization, used as the author when no individual is named
- Year of publication
- Full title of the report
- Report or publication number, when there is one
- Publisher, when it differs from the author
- URL
Rules specific to this entry
- A corporate author goes in the author slot spelled exactly as the body writes its own name, with no leading “The”. Vancouver does not abbreviate organization names the way IEEE compresses them to “Nat. Renewable Energy Lab.”
- “Report No.:” is written with that capitalization and colon, and the number is reproduced character for character including slashes and year segments. It is what makes the document findable after the agency reorganizes its site.
- A report published online still carries [Internet], a cited date, and “Available from:” alongside the report number. Government URLs change; the report number does not.
- Where an organization is both author and publisher, the short form after the place is normal — “Stockholm: NBHO” — even though the full name already appeared.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element Vancouver needs for a report: Issuing organization, used as the author when no individual is named; Year of publication; Full title of the report; Report or publication number, when there is one.
Build the references entry
Arrange those details in the Vancouver order: #. Issuing Organization. Title of the report [Internet]. Place: Publisher; Year [cited Year Mon DD]. Report No.: XXX. Available from: URL
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as Resistance to first-line agents rose in every region except the northernmost.⁴ — or work the same reference into your sentence as National surveillance⁴ recorded rising resistance to first-line agents in every region but one..
Check it against the exceptions
A corporate author goes in the author slot spelled exactly as the body writes its own name, with no leading “The”. Vancouver does not abbreviate organization names the way IEEE compresses them to “Nat. Renewable Energy Lab.”
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 report in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about Vancouver and reports
What if the report 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 report?
Issuing organization, used as the author when no individual is named, Year of publication, Full title of the report, and the rest of the elements listed above. Reports from governments, NGOs, and think tanks usually have a corporate author rather than a person, and often a report number that has to be preserved exactly.
Is there anything unusual about a report in Vancouver?
A corporate author goes in the author slot spelled exactly as the body writes its own name, with no leading “The”. Vancouver does not abbreviate organization names the way IEEE compresses them to “Nat. Renewable Energy Lab.”
What else catches people out here?
“Report No.:” is written with that capitalization and colon, and the number is reproduced character for character including slashes and year segments. It is what makes the document findable after the agency reorganizes its site.
Can I reformat this report 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.
