Vancouver is the referencing style used across medicine, nursing, pharmacy and public health — the form expected in MBBS, BSc Nursing, BPH and MD coursework at IOM, BPKIHS, KUSMS and Patan Academy of Health Sciences. Like IEEE it numbers sources in citation order, but its punctuation follows the NLM biomedical convention.
Enter the details from the article or book and the reference is built in your browser. No detail is invented — anything missing is flagged so you can check the source rather than guess.
Vancouver and IEEE both number references, but they punctuate differently. Vancouver puts the surname first followed by initials with no full stops and no comma between them — Shrestha RK, not R. K. Shrestha. Article titles take no quotation marks, and journal names are abbreviated according to the NLM catalogue.
Volume, issue and pages are packed together with semicolons, brackets and a colon: 2019;45(3):112-8. The final page number is also abbreviated — 112-8 rather than 112-118.
Pattern: Authors. Title of the article. Journal Abbrev. Year;Volume(Issue):Pages.
Example: Shrestha RK, Thapa S, Basnet P. Antibiotic resistance patterns in a tertiary hospital. J Nepal Med Assoc. 2019;57(4):245-51.
List up to six authors. With seven or more, give the first six followed by et al. Separate authors with commas and close the author list with a full stop.
Book pattern: Authors. Title of the book. Edition. Publisher; Year.
Chapter pattern: Authors. Title of the chapter. In: Editors. Title of the book. Publisher; Year. p. pages.
Include the edition whenever the book has one beyond the first — clinical texts are revised often, and the edition materially changes what a reader will find on the cited page.
Pattern: Author. Title [Internet]. Site Name. Year. Available from: URL
Example: Department of Health Services. Annual report 2078/79 [Internet]. Ministry of Health and Population. 2022. Available from: https://dohs.gov.np
The [Internet] marker tells the reader the source is online-only. For WHO and ministry publications, the issuing body is the author.
Number sources in the order you first mention them and reuse the same number on every later mention. The reference list is not alphabetised — it follows citation order.
Journals differ on whether the in-text marker is superscript or bracketed. Follow the format your department or target journal specifies, and apply it consistently through the whole document.
Vancouver is standard for MBBS, BSc Nursing, BPH, BPharm and postgraduate medical coursework at institutions including IOM, BPKIHS, KUSMS and PAHS. Confirm the expected style with your department.
List up to six authors in full. If there are seven or more, give the first six and then et al.
Yes. Vancouver uses NLM journal abbreviations — J Nepal Med Assoc rather than Journal of the Nepal Medical Association. Use the journal's own stated abbreviation where it gives one.
No. References appear in the order they are first cited in the text, numbered from 1.
Yes. It is free, runs in your browser, and nothing you enter leaves your device.