Vancouver style
How to cite a thesis or dissertation in Vancouver style
A thesis needs its degree level and awarding institution, and the format changes depending on whether you read it in a repository or as an unpublished manuscript.
THE FORMAT
A thesis or dissertation in Vancouver, at a glance
#. Author AA. Title of the thesis [dissertation]. Place: Institution; Year.
4. Nkemelu D. Predicting delirium after cardiac surgery using preoperative frailty indices [dissertation]. Leeds: University of Leeds; 2022.
Preoperative frailty outperformed age alone in every model tested.⁴
In prose: Nkemelu⁴ found that a five-item frailty index outperformed age alone in every model tested.
5. Sato H. Nurse-led triage and time to antibiotics in suspected sepsis [master’s thesis on the Internet]. Melbourne: Monash University; 2021 [cited 2025 Mar 4]. Available from: https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/thesis/nurse-led-triage
In text: Nurse-led triage cut median time to antibiotics by 26 minutes.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 thesis or dissertation
Elements to collect
- Author
- Year the degree was awarded
- Title of the thesis
- Degree level — doctoral dissertation or master’s thesis
- Name of the awarding institution
- Repository or database name, plus URL, when it is published online
Rules specific to this entry
- The type goes in square brackets straight after the title: [dissertation] for a doctorate, [master’s thesis] for a master’s. It occupies the same slot as [Internet], and the two combine when the work was read online.
- The awarding institution takes the publisher position after the place: “Leeds: University of Leeds”. Vancouver does not name the department, where IEEE abbreviates and includes it.
- Citing Medicine treats a thesis as a book-like monograph, so there are no quotation marks and no italics — only sentence case, as with every other Vancouver title.
- Many journals ask for an accession or repository number for unpublished theses. Add it after the year when the instructions to authors request it, rather than assuming the URL alone is enough.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element Vancouver needs for a thesis or dissertation: Author; Year the degree was awarded; Title of the thesis; Degree level — doctoral dissertation or master’s thesis.
Build the references entry
Arrange those details in the Vancouver order: #. Author AA. Title of the thesis [dissertation]. Place: Institution; Year.
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as Preoperative frailty outperformed age alone in every model tested.⁴ — or work the same reference into your sentence as Nkemelu⁴ found that a five-item frailty index outperformed age alone in every model tested..
Check it against the exceptions
The type goes in square brackets straight after the title: [dissertation] for a doctorate, [master’s thesis] for a master’s. It occupies the same slot as [Internet], and the two combine when the work was read online.
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 thesis or dissertation in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about Vancouver and theses and dissertations
What if the thesis or dissertation 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 thesis or dissertation?
Author, Year the degree was awarded, Title of the thesis, and the rest of the elements listed above. A thesis needs its degree level and awarding institution, and the format changes depending on whether you read it in a repository or as an unpublished manuscript.
Is there anything unusual about a thesis or dissertation in Vancouver?
The type goes in square brackets straight after the title: [dissertation] for a doctorate, [master’s thesis] for a master’s. It occupies the same slot as [Internet], and the two combine when the work was read online.
What else catches people out here?
The awarding institution takes the publisher position after the place: “Leeds: University of Leeds”. Vancouver does not name the department, where IEEE abbreviates and includes it.
Can I reformat this thesis or dissertation 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.
