Paste a DOI, ISBN, URL or title
Need to build a bibliography for your paper? Our free bibliography generator creates accurate entries in APA, MLA, Chicago, IEEE, Harvard, ACS, CSE, ASA, and AMA. Paste a DOI, ISBN, URL, or title, pick your style, and copy the formatted entry straight into your document.
Before you start, it is worth knowing that your assignment may not actually be asking for a bibliography. The three lists that go at the end of a paper have different names because they contain different things, and handing in the wrong one costs marks even when every entry is formatted perfectly.
A bibliography lists every source you consulted while researching, including background reading you never quoted. A works cited page — the MLA name — lists only the sources that actually appear in your text. A reference list — the APA and Harvard name — is the same idea: cited sources only.
So the question is not one of formatting but of scope. If your instructor asked for a bibliography and you hand in only your cited sources, you have left out the reading that shows how much research you did. If they asked for a works cited page and you include everything you skimmed, you have padded it.
Work source by source. For anything published academically, the fastest route is an identifier: paste a DOI for a journal article, an ISBN for a book, or the URL of a web page, and the generator pulls the metadata from CrossRef, OpenAlex, Open Library, or Google Books rather than making you retype it.
For a source that is not indexed anywhere — a lecture, an interview, an internal report — switch to manual entry and type the fields in. Then set the style once and generate every entry in that same style, so the punctuation stays consistent all the way down the list.
The generator produces correctly formatted entries; assembling them into a page is your side of the work, and the rules are nearly universal across styles. Alphabetize by the first author's surname, ignoring A, An, and The when a title takes the author position. Apply a hanging indent, so the first line of each entry sits flush left and continuations are indented. Double-space unless your style guide says otherwise.
The exceptions are the numbered styles. IEEE, AMA, and CSE citation-sequence order the list by first citation rather than alphabetically, so a bibliography in those styles is numbered and must not be re-sorted.
Every entry can be exported as BibTeX or RIS. BibTeX is what you want for LaTeX and Overleaf; RIS imports into Zotero, Mendeley, and EndNote. Exporting is worth doing even when you only need a formatted list today — if the assignment later switches from APA to Chicago, a stored BibTeX file re-renders in seconds, while a pasted list has to be rebuilt entry by entry.
A bibliography lists every source you consulted, including background reading you never cited. A reference list or works cited page lists only the sources that appear in your text.
By the first author's surname. When a work has no author and starts with a title, alphabetize by the first significant word, ignoring A, An, and The. Numbered styles such as IEEE and AMA are not alphabetized at all — they stay in citation order.
It is an indent on every line of an entry except the first, and APA, MLA, Chicago, and Harvard all require it. In Word or Google Docs, select the list and set Special indent to Hanging, 0.5 inch — do not fake it with the space bar.
No. Pick one style and generate every entry in it. Mixed punctuation is the most visible sign that references were copied from different places, and it is the easiest thing for a grader to spot.
Yes. Every style, plus BibTeX and RIS export, is free with no account required.