Vancouver referencing, with examples

Vancouver style is named after a meeting of medical journal editors in Vancouver, Canada, in 1978. That group became the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE). For the details of each reference, the ICMJE points to Citing Medicine, the guide from the US National Library of Medicine (NLM). This guide follows the ICMJE Recommendations and Citing Medicine (2nd edition). The reference examples are Peel’s own output, so you can check yours against them.

Most universities publish their own version of Vancouver, and they differ in small ways: the brackets, how many authors to list, and how to add a page number. Where they differ, this guide says so. If your course handbook says something different, follow your handbook.

Numbers in the text

Give each source a number the first time you cite it. The first source you cite is 1, the next new source is 2, and so on. When you cite a source again, use the number it already has. You don’t put the author or the year in the brackets: the number sends your reader to the full reference.

The numbers match the full reference list further down: Kahneman’s book is 1, Braun and Clarke 2, McLeod 3, Miller 4 and NICE 5. Source 6 would be the next new one, such as the 2004 article by Kahneman and four others.

Round brackets, square brackets or raised numbers

The ICMJE asks for numbers in round brackets, and that’s what Peel gives you: (1). Many universities and journals use square brackets, [1], or raised (superscript) numbers¹ instead. All three are Vancouver. Check your course handbook, and use one form all the way through. If your handbook wants square brackets or raised numbers, change them when you paste.

Where the number goes

Put the number straight after the fact, idea or name it supports, so your reader can see what came from where. With round or square brackets, most guides put it before a full stop or comma. If you name the author, the number goes straight after the name: Braun and Clarke (2) describe six phases of thematic analysis.

Naming authors in your sentence

You can name the authors as well, and the number still goes in. For two authors, give both names: Braun and Clarke (2). For three or more, most guides use the first author’s surname and “et al.”, which means “and others”: Kahneman et al. (6). An organisation’s name works the same way. The year never goes in the brackets.

Quotes and page numbers

Citing Medicine doesn’t set a form for page numbers in the text, so this is where universities differ most. Most ask for a page number with a direct quote, after the source’s number: (1 p81) and (1, p. 81) are both common, and some use a raised ^1(p81). Check your course handbook. Quotes are rare in scientific writing, and many courses would rather you put the idea in your own words.

Peel’s Vancouver citation is the number on its own, even for a quote with a page. Add the page by hand, in the form your handbook asks for.

Two or more sources at once

Put the numbers in the same brackets, with commas between them: (2,4). For three or more numbers in a row, join the first and the last with a hyphen: (1-3) means sources 1, 2 and 3.

A source you read about in another one

Cite only the source you actually read, and say in your sentence where the idea came from: “Baddeley and Hitch’s model of working memory, as described by McLeod (3), …”. Only McLeod goes in your reference list, because that’s the one you read. If you can, find and read the original. Some universities want this set out in a particular way, so check your course handbook.

The reference list

The list at the end of your work is headed References. It gives the full details of every source you cited, and only those.

• Order: number order. Reference 1 is the first source you cited, 2 is the second, and so on. Don’t sort it A to Z.
• Layout: each reference starts with its number. Peel pastes each one with a hanging indent, so the numbers stand out down the left.
• Authors: surname, then up to two initials, with no full stops and no spaces: Kahneman D, Krueger AB. Put a comma between authors and a full stop after the last one. There’s no “and”.
• How many authors: list every author, up to six. With seven or more, list the first six, then “et al.”. That’s what the ICMJE’s sample references do, and Peel does the same. Citing Medicine itself prefers every author, and some universities ask for the first three, so check your course handbook.
• Capital letters: titles of articles, books and web pages are in sentence case, so most words start with a small letter: Thinking, fast and slow. Names keep their capitals. Peel prints titles the way you type them.
• No italics: Citing Medicine doesn’t use italics, bold or quotation marks in references.
• Journal articles: the year, volume, issue and pages run together with no spaces, as in 1950;59(236):433–60. In a page range, leave out the digits that repeat: 433–60 means pages 433 to 460. If the article has a DOI, it goes at the end.
• Online sources: add [Internet] after the title, the date you looked at it in square brackets, like [cited 2026 Oct 20], and “Available from:” before the link.
• Dates: the year, then the month in three letters, then the day: 2024 Mar 5.

Journal names: type the abbreviation

Vancouver uses the short journal names in the NLM Catalog, with no full stops. For example, Psychological Review is Psychol Rev. A one-word name, like Science or Nature, stays as it is. To find a journal’s abbreviation, search for its full name in the NLM Catalog.

In Peel, type the journal’s full name as usual, and its abbreviation in the Journal abbreviation box in the source’s details. Type it with its full stops, like Psychol. Rev.: Vancouver takes them out.

Examples for each kind of source

Each card has a pattern to follow, a real example where there’s one, and the citation in the text. Every example is numbered 1 because it’s shown on its own. In your list, each source takes the number of its first citation.

A full reference list

Say you cite Kahneman’s book first, then Braun and Clarke, McLeod, Miller and NICE. This is what Peel copies for those five sources: numbered in the order you cited them, with hanging indents that survive pasting into Word or Google Docs.

1. 1. Kahneman D. Thinking, fast and slow. London: Allen Lane; 2011.
2. 2. Braun V, Clarke V. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qual Res Psychol. 2006;3(2):77-101. doi:10.1191/1478088706qp063oa
3. 3. McLeod S. Simply Psychology [Internet]. [cited 2026 Oct 20]. Working memory model. Available from: https://www.simplypsychology.org/working-memory.html
4. 4. Miller GA. The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychol Rev. 1956;63(2):81-97. doi:10.1037/h0043158
5. 5. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Hypertension in adults: diagnosis and management [Internet]. 2019 [cited 2026 Oct 20]. Report No.: NG136. Available from: https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng136

To build your list while you read, not the night before the deadline, see how to reference as you go. In a numbered style the order matters, so it helps to know which sources each part of your work uses: see how to track sources in each chapter.

Common mistakes

• A new number each time. A source keeps the number it got the first time you cited it.
• Sorting the list A to Z. Vancouver lists sources in number order.
• Mixing in Harvard. The number replaces (Miller, 1956). You can name the author in your sentence, but the year doesn’t go in the brackets.
• Full stops after initials. It’s Miller GA, not Miller, G.A.
• Full journal names. Use the NLM abbreviation, like Psychol Rev.
• Mixing brackets. Choose round, square or raised numbers, and use one form all the way through.
• No [cited] date for an online source. Web pages, online reports and videos need the date you looked at them.
• Listing sources you didn’t cite. A reference list only has sources with a number in your text.