Cite a book by ISBN

Enter an ISBN and get a formatted citation.

Hyphens optional. ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 both work.

Citation styles

• MLA — Modern Language Association, 9th edition. Humanities and literature.
• APA — American Psychological Association, 7th edition. Social sciences.
• Chicago — notes-bibliography form. History and the arts.
• Wikipedia — a ready-to-paste {{cite book}} template.
• BibTeX — a @book entry for LaTeX and reference managers.

Use it from a script

Every page is also an API. Ask for JSON and you get JSON.

curl -H 'Accept: application/json' https://www.ottobib.com/isbn/9780226458113
curl https://www.ottobib.com/isbn/9780226458113/bibtex.json

Add a style for one format, or omit it for all five. OpenAPI description.

Questions

How do I cite a book by ISBN?

Enter the ISBN-10 or ISBN-13 above and choose a style. OttoBib looks up the edition and returns a formatted citation you can paste into your works cited page.

Which citation styles are supported?

MLA, APA, Chicago, Wikipedia's cite book template, and BibTeX.

Can I use this from a script?

Yes. Request /isbn/{isbn} with Accept: application/json, or add a .json suffix. Add /{style} for a single format.

Where does the data come from?

Published bibliographic catalogue records. Whichever source answers, the requested ISBN is verified against the returned record before anything is formatted.