Free book citation generator

Cite a book by ISBN in five styles. Copy or download the result, free and without an account.

ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 both work. Spaces and hyphens are optional; ISBN-10 may end in X.

For example, The structure of scientific revolutions gives you:

MLA  Thomas S. Kuhn. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Fourth edition., U of Chicago P.
APA  Thomas S. Kuhn. (n.d.). The structure of scientific revolutions (Fourth edition.). The University of Chicago Press.

Check the year and edition against your copy. Missing dates appear as “n.d.” in APA.

Citation tools

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.

They disagree because their fields cite different kinds of thing. Why citation styles disagree works through it.

Guides

How to cite a book. One book in MLA, APA, Chicago, Wikipedia and BibTeX, side by side, with the four decisions that account for the differences.
Building a works cited page. Ordering, hanging indents, and what Works Cited, References and Bibliography each actually mean.
Citing a translated book. Which year, which title, and where the translator goes.
Checking whether a citation is real. Models produce citations that look correct and are not. The ISBN is the part you can test.
Why citation styles disagree. MLA counts pages, APA counts years, historians use footnotes and medicine uses numbers. Each follows from what that field cites.
ISBN converter and validator. Convert between ISBN-10 and ISBN-13, check a check digit, and see which registration group issued it. Runs in your browser.

Use it from a script

See the ISBN citation API documentation for examples and response handling.

One JSON request returns all five styles, normalized ISBN identity, and available quality and uncertainty fields from the immutable local publication.

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. A 200 {found:false} response ends the immediate lookup attempt. For temporary failures, follow Retry-After.

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.