doir · free tool

DOIs in, formatted references out.

Write bare DOIs in square brackets in your Word manuscript, and doir turns them into citations and a reference list in any of about 10,000 journal styles.

Drop your .docx here or click to choose

Word documents up to 20 MB

Advanced
Punctuation around citations

How it works

Three steps, one file

  1. 01

    Write DOIs in brackets

    Cite as you write in Word: put the DOI in square brackets, like [10.1038/nature14539]. Separate several with a semicolon. References without a DOI can go in as text.

  2. 02

    Pick the journal style

    Search about 10,000 CSL styles by journal or style name: Nature, APA, Vancouver, IEEE and the rest.

  3. 03

    Download and check

    Get the .docx back with formatted citations and a reference list, plus a list of anything that needs your attention.

Example

Before and after

A DOI

In your manuscript

Deep nets work [10.1038/nature14539].

Nature (nature)

Deep nets work.1

1. LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y. & Hinton, G. Deep learning. Nature 521, 436–444 (2015).

APA (apa)

Deep nets work (LeCun et al., 2015).

LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y., & Hinton, G. (2015). Deep learning. Nature, 521(7553), 436–444. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539

A DOI mixed with free text

Items without a DOI are cited and listed as written, highlighted, so the numbering is right and you can complete them later.

In your manuscript

Deep nets work [10.1038/nature14539; kaggle.com, accessed 2025-01-01; my prof].

Nature (nature)

Deep nets work.1–3

1. LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y. & Hinton, G. Deep learning. Nature 521, 436–444 (2015).

2. kaggle.com, accessed 2025-01-01

3. my prof

APA (apa)

Deep nets work (LeCun et al., 2015; ?1; ?2).

LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y., & Hinton, G. (2015). Deep learning. Nature, 521(7553), 436–444. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539

?1 kaggle.com, accessed 2025-01-01

?2 my prof

FAQ

Questions

Is my manuscript stored?

No. The file is processed in memory and discarded as soon as the converted document is sent back. Only public DOI metadata is cached, never your text.

Which citation styles are supported?

About 10,000 CSL styles: numeric and author-date styles from the official CSL repository, including most journals. Note-based styles, such as Chicago notes and bibliography, are not supported.

How do I cite several papers at once?

Put them in one pair of brackets, separated by semicolons: [10.1/a; 10.2/b].

Can I cite things that have no DOI?

Yes. Write the reference as text in the brackets, on its own or next to DOIs: [Smith J., Lecture notes on optics, 2019] or [10.1038/nature14539; kaggle.com, accessed 2025-01-01]. It's cited and listed exactly as you wrote it, highlighted, so the numbering stays right and you can complete the entry later. In author-date styles it shows as ?1, ?2 until you do.

How does doir tell citations from other brackets?

A bracket counts as a citation when it looks like a reference: it has a DOI, a web address or a year, or it's a long passage of text. Short notes such as [Fig. 2], [n = 12] or [SO3+] stay as they are. If doir misses one, start it with cit:, as in [cit: my prof]. It's then always cited, and the cit: itself doesn't appear in the reference list.

What happens to DOIs that can't be found?

They're highlighted in the document and the reference list, and listed under problems, so you can fix them and convert again.

What about footnotes, headers, text boxes and tracked changes?

Citations there are reported and left exactly as written. doir only rewrites citations in the main text and tables, and it never edits across tracked changes.

Is there a size limit?

Yes, 20 MB per file.