IEEE Citation Generator

Enter your source details and get a correctly formatted IEEE reference, plus the bracketed number you cite it by in the text, in seconds. Built for the lab reports, project write-ups, technical papers and theses that follow IEEE — with a live preview you can copy straight into your reference list.

Used in: Electrical and electronic engineering, computer science, telecommunications and information technology — IEEE is the standard numbered style across engineering and computing coursework worldwide.

IEEENumeric

Enter your source

Auto-cite from a DOI, ISBN or PubMed ID

Or fill the form yourself below. A bare web address can’t be looked up in the browser — paste its DOI instead.

Source type

A peer-reviewed article in an academic journal.

Author

Digital Object Identifier, if the source has one.

Year published

Add an author or a title and your formatted IEEE citation appears here instantly.

In your text

Cite with a bracketed number in the order each source first appears, e.g. [1], and reuse the same number every time you cite that source. You can read a number as a noun: “as shown in [1]”.

In your reference list

Numbered in square brackets in order of appearance, not alphabetically. Authors are given as initials then surname (E. Tulving); article titles go in quotation marks and take sentence case, while journal, book and proceedings names are italicised.

IEEE tips
  • List authors as initials first, then surname: “D. M. Thomson”. Two authors join with “and”; for seven or more, give the first author then “et al.”.
  • Put article, chapter and paper titles in double quotation marks with sentence case; italicise journal, book and proceedings names.
  • A journal reference ends “vol. X, no. Y, pp. ZZ–ZZ, Year.” with the year last.
  • Number references in the order you cite them and reuse each number on every later citation of that source.
  • For a web page or video, give the URL and an access date: “(accessed Jan. 15, 2024)”.

Your reference list is empty. Build a citation above and choose “Add to list” to collect your sources here, correctly ordered and ready to copy or export.

The IEEE numbered system

Cite by a number in square brackets — [1], in order of appearance

IEEE does not cite by author and year. Every source earns a bracketed number the first time it appears in your text, and that same number follows it everywhere else. The reference list is then ordered by appearance — not alphabetically — so the numbering and the list are two views of the same order.

Follow a paragraph as you write it

The transformer architecture[1]first introduced self-attention at scale,new source → next number
and the IEEE 802.11 standard[2]defines the wireless layer it now runs on.new source → next number
Later experiments build directly on the same architecture[1]reported earlier,repeat → reuse [1]
while three datasets[3]–[5]supply the benchmark suite.consecutive sources → a range
Number in order

The first source you cite is [1], the next new one [2], and so on — by order of first appearance, never alphabetically.

Reuse on repeats

Cite the same source again and you reuse its original number — [1] stays [1] wherever it reappears, however far apart.

Group with a range

Several sources at once collapse to a range — [3]–[5] — or a list, [2], [4], [6]. The brackets read as a noun: “the method in [4]”.

…and the reference list mirrors that exact order
  1. [1]the transformer paper (cited first)Conference paper
  2. [2]the IEEE 802.11 wireless standardStandard
  3. [3]benchmark dataset ADataset
  4. [4]benchmark dataset BDataset
  5. [5]benchmark dataset CDataset

No [6] appears in the text, so there is no [6] in the list. The list is exactly as long as the count of distinct sources you cited.

Engineering sources are first-class here
IEEE is built for engineering and computing, so it numbers things APA and MLA rarely touch: published standards (IEEE 802.11, ISO/IEC), patents, datasets, datasheets and software releases each take their own bracketed number in the running order, exactly like a journal article.
Templates by source type

Every source type, with its IEEE template

Match your source to a row, drop your own details into the template, and check it against the worked example. The tool above builds these automatically — this is the map of what it produces.

Journal article

Template
A. Author and B. Author, "Title of article," Journal Name, vol. X, no. Y, pp. xx–xx, Year.
Example
E. Tulving and D. M. Thomson, "Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory," Psychological Review, vol. 80, no. 5, pp. 352–373, 1973.

Book

Template
A. Author, Title of Book, Xth ed. City, ST: Publisher, Year.
Example
T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

Book chapter

Template
A. Author, "Title of chapter," in Title of Book, B. Editor, Ed. City: Publisher, Year, pp. xx–xx.
Example
J. J. McGann, "The rationale of hypertext," in Electronic Text: Investigations in Method and Theory, D. C. Greetham, Ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 19–46.

Website

Template
A. Author. "Title of page." Website Name. URL (accessed Mon. Day, Year).
Example
K. Cherry. "How human memory works." Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/how-memory-works-2795000 (accessed Jan. 15, 2024).

Newspaper article

Template
A. Author, "Title of article," Newspaper Name, Mon. Day, Year. [Online]. Available: URL
Example
D. Carrington, "World leaders strike landmark climate deal at COP26," The Guardian, Nov. 13, 2021. [Online]. Available: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/13/cop26-climate-deal

Online video

Template
Uploader. "Title of video." Platform. URL
Example
Veritasium. "The science of thermodynamics." YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb-zVtJf9Hk

Conference paper

Template
A. Author and B. Author, "Title of paper," in Proceedings Title, City, ST, Year, pp. xx–xx.
Example
A. Vaswani and N. Shazeer, "Attention is all you need," in Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, Long Beach, CA, 2017, pp. 5998–6008.

Thesis / dissertation

Template
A. Author, "Title of thesis," <degree type>, Institution, Year.
Example
J. A. Doe, "Essays on monetary policy and inflation expectations," Doctoral dissertation, University of Oxford, 2019.

Report

Template
Organisation, "Title of report," Institution, City, Country, Rep. No. xx, Year.
Example
World Health Organization, "World health statistics 2023: Monitoring health for the SDGs," World Health Organization, Geneva, Switzerland, Rep. No. 24, 2023.
Anatomy of a reference

A journal article, part by part

Read an IEEE reference left to right and each element lands in a fixed slot, separated by commas, with one full stop closing the entry. Here is the same example the generator returns, taken apart.

The finished reference

E. Tulving and D. M. Thomson, "Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory," Psychological Review, vol. 80, no. 5, pp. 352–373, 1973.

  1. 1
    Author(s)E. Tulving and D. M. Thomson,

    Initials first, then the surname. Two authors join with “and”; the author element closes with a comma.

  2. 2
    Article title"Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory,"

    In double quotation marks, sentence case, with the trailing comma placed inside the closing quotation mark.

  3. 3
    Journal namePsychological Review,

    The journal is the container — italicised, in title case, followed by a comma.

  4. 4
    Volume & issuevol. 80, no. 5,

    Carry the labels “vol.” and “no.”, separated by a comma.

  5. 5
    Page rangepp. 352–373,

    Use “pp.” with the full second number (IEEE does not condense it) and an en dash.

  6. 6
    Year1973.

    The year comes last in a journal reference and closes the entry with a full stop.

Author names

Initials first, surname last: “J. K. Smith”

IEEE writes names the opposite way round from APA. You lead with the author's initials — each initial followed by a full stop and a space — and finish with the surname. Names are never inverted, and there is no ampersand.

Full name
Jane Katherine Smith
IEEE form
J. K. Smith
2 authors

Join with and, no comma between them.

E. Tulving and D. M. Thomson
3–6 authors

List them all, with a serial comma and and before the last.

A. Author, B. Author, and C. Author
7+ authors

Give only the first author, then et al.

A. Author et al.
Two things to remember
  • •The in-text citation is always just the bracketed number— “et al.” never appears in the text, only in the reference list.
  • •No personal author? Lead with the responsible organisationinstead — the issuing body of a standard or report, such as “IEEE” or “World Health Organization”.
Get it right

Common IEEE slip-ups, fixed

Most IEEE errors come from carrying habits over from author–date styles — inverting names, title-casing article titles, or putting the year up front. Here is each one, corrected.

Avoid
Tulving, E., and Thomson, D. M.,
Correct
E. Tulving and D. M. Thomson,

IEEE puts the initials first and the surname last — it does not invert names, and it does not use an ampersand.

Avoid
"Encoding Specificity and Retrieval Processes in Episodic Memory,"
Correct
"Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory,"

Article, chapter and paper titles take sentence case, not headline case — only the first word and proper nouns are capitalised.

Avoid
"Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory",
Correct
"Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory,"

The comma (or full stop) ending a quoted title goes inside the closing quotation mark in IEEE.

Avoid
Psychological Review, vol. 80, no. 5, pp. 352–373.
Correct
Psychological Review, vol. 80, no. 5, pp. 352–373, 1973.

In a journal reference the year comes last, after the page range — not bracketed near the front as in author–date styles.

Avoid
pp. 352–73,
Correct
pp. 352–373,

IEEE keeps the full second page number; it does not condense the range the way MLA does.

Avoid
(Tulving and Thomson, 1973)
Correct
[1]

The in-text citation is a bracketed number, not an author–date parenthetical — and you reuse the same number on every later citation of that source.

The finished article

A sample IEEE reference list

This is how a complete list looks: numbered in the order each source first appeared in the text, with mixed source types sitting side by side. Hanging numbers on the left, the reference flush beside them.

  1. [1]E. Tulving and D. M. Thomson, "Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory," Psychological Review, vol. 80, no. 5, pp. 352–373, 1973.
  2. [2]T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 3rd ed. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
  3. [3]A. Vaswani and N. Shazeer, "Attention is all you need," in Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, Long Beach, CA, 2017, pp. 5998–6008.
  4. [4]K. Cherry. "How human memory works." Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/how-memory-works-2795000 (accessed Jan. 15, 2024).
Which IEEE this follows
This generator follows the IEEE Reference Guide (the citation conventions of the IEEE Editorial Style Manual). What is distinctive is the numbered system: references are listed and numbered in the order they first appear in the text, every in-text citation is the matching bracketed number such as [1], and that number is reused on each later citation. Author names are written initials-first, article titles take sentence case in quotation marks, and container names (journals, books, proceedings) are italicised — with full journal names used in place of IEEE’s standard abbreviation list.

IEEE Citation Generator — questions

How do IEEE in-text citations work?+

IEEE is a numbered style. Each source gets a number in square brackets the first time you cite it — [1], [2], [3] — and you reuse that same number every time you cite it again, no matter where it appears. The numbers run in the order sources first appear in your text, so your reference list is ordered by appearance rather than alphabetically. You can also read a number as part of a sentence, for example “the method in [4] outperforms the baseline”.

How are author names formatted in IEEE?+

Give each author’s initials first, then the surname — “E. Tulving”, “D. M. Thomson”. Two authors are joined with “and”; three to six authors take a serial comma with “and” before the last. For seven or more authors, list only the first author followed by “et al.” This generator applies the right form automatically once you enter the authors.

When do I use “et al.” in IEEE?+

Use “et al.” in the reference list only when a source has seven or more authors: give the first author’s name and then “et al.” With six or fewer authors, list every author in full. The in-text citation is always just the bracketed number, so “et al.” never appears in the text itself.

Which titles are italicised and which go in quotation marks?+

Put the title of a part — a journal article, a book chapter, a conference paper or a web page — in double quotation marks, with the comma or full stop inside the closing quotation mark. Italicise the name of the larger work it sits in: the journal, the book, the conference proceedings or the newspaper. Article titles take sentence case, while book and proceedings titles take headline (title) case.

Does this generator abbreviate journal names?+

No — it uses the full journal name. IEEE conventionally abbreviates journal titles (for example, “IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence” becomes “IEEE Trans. Pattern Anal. Mach. Intell.”), but those abbreviations come from a fixed standard list this tool does not include. The full name is always unambiguous and accepted by most markers; if your department requires the abbreviated form, shorten the journal field yourself before copying.

How do I cite a website or online video in IEEE?+

For an online source, give the author or organisation, the page or video title in quotation marks, the website or platform name, the URL, and an access date in the form “(accessed Jan. 15, 2024)”. A newspaper article you read online adds “[Online]. Available:” before the URL. Enter the access date and this tool builds the “(accessed …)” phrase for you.

How do I cite a source with no named author?+

Start the entry with the organisation responsible for the work — for a technical report or standard this is usually the issuing body, such as “World Health Organization” or “IEEE”. If there is genuinely no author or organisation, begin with the title instead. Either way the source still takes the next number in sequence, because IEEE orders references by when they first appear, not by author name.

What order should my IEEE reference list be in?+

List references in the order they are first cited in your text, numbered [1], [2], [3], and so on — not alphabetically. The number in the list must match the bracketed number you used in the text, so the easiest workflow is to number sources as you write and add each new one to the end of the list.

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