Vancouver style
How to cite a YouTube video in Vancouver style
The person who uploaded a video is often not the person who made it, and styles disagree about whether the channel name, the real name, or both belong in the entry.
THE FORMAT
A YouTube video in Vancouver, at a glance
#. Creator AA or Channel. Title of the video [video on the Internet]. Place: Publisher; Year Mon DD [cited Year Mon DD]. ## min., ## sec. Available from: URL
4. Royal College of Perioperative Medicine. Ultrasound-guided internal jugular cannulation [video on the Internet]. London: RCPM; 2023 Jun 14 [cited 2025 Mar 4]. 8 min., 42 sec. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ7bK2mVn0E
The short-axis approach is demonstrated in the college’s own teaching video.⁴
In prose: The college’s teaching video⁴ demonstrates the short-axis approach on a live subject.
5. Ferreira LM. How to read a forest plot in ten minutes [video on the Internet]. [place unknown]: Ferreira LM; 2024 Feb 3 [cited 2025 Mar 4]. 11 min., 5 sec. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp3xR2kQm7A
In text: Heterogeneity is often misread as disagreement between trials.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 YouTube video
Elements to collect
- Uploader — the channel name, plus the creator’s real name when it is known
- Full date the video was posted
- Title of the video, exactly as it appears
- Platform name
- URL of the specific video
Rules specific to this entry
- Citing Medicine tags the medium in brackets after the title: “[video on the Internet]”. YouTube is where you found the video, not who published it — the channel owner is the publisher.
- Use the channel as the author when nobody is individually credited. When a named clinician presents, that person takes the author slot and the channel moves into the publisher slot after the place.
- The running time is Citing Medicine’s extent element and most journals treat it as optional. It is worth keeping for procedural material, since it tells a reader how long the demonstration runs before they open it.
- Where the place cannot be determined, NLM uses “[place unknown]” rather than leaving the element out. Bracketed supplied information is a standard NLM device, not an improvisation.
Building the entry, step by step
Collect the details
Before you format anything, gather every element Vancouver needs for a YouTube video: Uploader — the channel name, plus the creator’s real name when it is known; Full date the video was posted; Title of the video, exactly as it appears; Platform name.
Build the references entry
Arrange those details in the Vancouver order: #. Creator AA or Channel. Title of the video [video on the Internet]. Place: Publisher; Year Mon DD [cited Year Mon DD]. ## min., ## sec. Available from: URL
Add the in-text citation
In the body of your paper, cite it as The short-axis approach is demonstrated in the college’s own teaching video.⁴ — or work the same reference into your sentence as The college’s teaching video⁴ demonstrates the short-axis approach on a live subject..
Check it against the exceptions
Citing Medicine tags the medium in brackets after the title: “[video on the Internet]”. YouTube is where you found the video, not who published it — the channel owner is the publisher.
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 YouTube video in another style
Switching styles late in a draft is normal. Here is the same source formatted five other ways.
Questions about Vancouver and online videos
What if the YouTube video 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 YouTube video?
Uploader — the channel name, plus the creator’s real name when it is known, Full date the video was posted, Title of the video, exactly as it appears, and the rest of the elements listed above. The person who uploaded a video is often not the person who made it, and styles disagree about whether the channel name, the real name, or both belong in the entry.
Is there anything unusual about a YouTube video in Vancouver?
Citing Medicine tags the medium in brackets after the title: “[video on the Internet]”. YouTube is where you found the video, not who published it — the channel owner is the publisher.
What else catches people out here?
Use the channel as the author when nobody is individually credited. When a named clinician presents, that person takes the author slot and the channel moves into the publisher slot after the place.
Can I reformat this YouTube video 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.
