How to check a generated medical citation

Citation tools retrieve details from available records. Those records can be incomplete or inconsistent with the published article, so treat a generated reference as a draft to review.

Check these details against the article

• Author names and their order
• The complete article title
• The journal title and publication year
• Volume, issue, page range, or article number when present
• The DOI, if it appears in the source record

Open the publisher’s article page or the full text and compare each available field. The relevant NLM examples in Citing Medicine can help you check how journal article details are presented.

Understand missing-field notices

A missing-detail notice means a field is blank; it does not confirm the accuracy of other fields. Some articles use an article number or do not have traditional volume, issue, or page details. Compare what is shown with the publication rather than filling fields by guesswork.

If you find an error, edit the details before copying. The current tool keeps edits on the page only, so copy the corrected reference before leaving or refreshing. See the FAQ for more about edits and data sources.