Is a Vancouver reference list sorted by author or by number?

By number, not by author. The number matches the order in which the source first appears in the text. Only an agreed variant with your supervisor goes alphabetical — and that is no longer classic Vancouver.

Do I need a page number in Vancouver?

For a direct quotation, yes. The usual forms are (12, p. 345) or the superscript variant 12(p345). For a paraphrase the number alone is enough — the convention depends on the journal or your department.

How do I cite multiple sources at once in Vancouver?

List the numbers inside the parentheses, with a hyphen for consecutive ones: (3,5,8) or (3–8). A hyphen range is only valid when every number in between genuinely supports the sentence — otherwise list them individually.

Vancouver citation style: rules and examples for medicine and nursing

The Vancouver citation style is the standard in medicine, nursing, and the health sciences, and if you are writing a clinical bachelor’s or master’s thesis you probably don’t have a choice. At first glance it looks simple: numbers in the text, a numbered list at the end. The pitfalls, as usual, hide in the details — and in the fact that a clean numbering says nothing about whether the source actually supports the sentence it is attached to.

This guide walks you through the core rules, the main source types, and the places where Vancouver theses routinely drop marks.

One note up front: the real references below (the ESC guideline, Harrison, the WHO diabetes report) are flagged as such; every other author name, DOI, and page range is illustrative — meant to show the form, not to copy.

The core idea: numbers instead of names

Instead of (Smith 2023) in the running text, you put a plain number. Round parentheses or superscript digits are standard; square brackets appear in some engineering-flavoured variants. Which one your department expects is in the handbook — check it before you start.

The prevalence of atrial fibrillation rises sharply with age (1).

Or, as superscript:

The prevalence of atrial fibrillation rises sharply with age.¹

In the reference list at the end of the thesis you sort in the order each source first appears in the text — not alphabetically. Each source gets one fixed number, and when you cite it again later you reuse the same number:

The ESC guideline recommends opportunistic screening in every patient over 65 (1). The recommendation rests on a meta-analysis of more than 100,000 participants (1).

Two citations, one number, one entry in the list. That is the central difference from APA or Harvard.

Authors: when et al. kicks in

Up to six authors are all listed by name. From the seventh onwards you cut off after the first six and add et al.:

Smith J, Weber A, Hoffmann P, Bauer L, Keller M, Reinmann G. Prevalence of atrial fibrillation in community-dwelling adults. N Engl J Med. 2024;390(5):421–430.

FREE QUICK CHECK

Check your bibliography in 10 seconds

Paste your reference list. Acurio flags fabricated or mismatched citations. Free, no signup.

Run a free check

Smith J, Weber A, Hoffmann P, Bauer L, Keller M, Reinmann G, et al. Long-term follow-up of patients with persistent atrial fibrillation. Lancet. 2023;401(10378):789–800.

Name format: family name first, then initials with no periods and no comma between them (Smith J, not Smith, J.). Commas separate authors, a period follows the last name. The convention comes from the US National Library of Medicine (NLM) and is enforced strictly in the clinical world.

Journal articles: the base case

The classic Vancouver entry for a journal article looks like this:

Hindricks G, Potpara T, Dagres N, Arbelo E, Bax JJ, Blomström-Lundqvist C, et al. 2020 ESC Guidelines for the diagnosis and management of atrial fibrillation. Eur Heart J. 2021;42(5):373–498. doi:10.1093/eurheartj/ehaa612

Elements, in order:

Authors (up to six written out, then et al.)
Article title (no quotation marks, sentence case)
Abbreviated journal name in NLM style (Eur Heart J, not European Heart Journal)
Year;Volume(Issue):Page range
DOI, if available

Journal abbreviations are where many theses go inconsistent. Use the NLM Catalog journal lookup or let your reference manager (Zotero, EndNote) fill them in — but spot-check the output, because Zotero items pulled from PubMed are not always clean.

Books and book chapters

A whole book:

Loscalzo J, Fauci AS, Kasper DL, Hauser SL, Longo DL, Jameson JL, editors. Harrison’s principles of internal medicine. 21st ed. New York: McGraw Hill; 2022.

Keep the editor order exactly as it appears on the title page — Vancouver does not re-sort alphabetically, and examiners cross-check.

A chapter inside a book:

Camm AJ. Atrial fibrillation. In: Zipes DP, Jalife J, editors. Cardiac electrophysiology: from cell to bedside. 8th ed. Philadelphia: Elsevier; 2021. p. 787–815.

The editor field is easy to forget when you cite from an edited volume — and that is exactly the kind of slip examiners pick up on.

Online sources and clinical guidelines

Guidelines, websites, and standalone PDFs without a journal context take a date-accessed stamp and the URL:

World Health Organization. Global report on diabetes [Internet]. Geneva: WHO; 2016 [cited 2026-10-15]. Available from: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789241565257

The same pattern applies to guidelines from NICE (UK), the AHA (US), AWMF (Germany) or SGK (Switzerland). The [Internet] tag after the title flags that this is not print material — classic Vancouver requires it, many departments drop it. When unsure, follow the handbook.

Preprints, conference papers, grey literature

Preprints from medRxiv or bioRxiv get a label:

Chen Y, Liu H, Wang J. Early safety signals of a novel GLP-1 agonist [preprint]. medRxiv. 2026 [cited 2026-10-10]. doi:10.1101/2026.02.14.26000123

Conference papers:

Weber A. Risk stratification in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction. In: Proceedings of the European Society of Cardiology Congress; 2023 Aug 25–28; Amsterdam. Sophia Antipolis: ESC; 2023. p. 112.

Grey literature (theses, reports, statistical datasets) follows the same pattern: author, title, type in square brackets, publisher, year. There is no clean standard form for every edge case — the more transparent your entry, the better.

Citing multiple sources at once

When a sentence rests on more than one source, list the numbers:

The evidence is consistent (1,3,5,7).

For consecutive numbers, use a hyphen:

Several meta-analyses confirm the effect (1–4).

Important: the hyphen is only valid when every source in between actually backs the sentence. (1–4) means sources 1, 2, 3 and 4 all support the claim — not just 1 and 4. This shortcut is convenient and gets misused all the time, especially when you add sources late in the thesis and the numbering shifts.

Direct quotations and page numbers

Vancouver does not enforce page numbers as rigidly as APA. Two usual variants:

The authors conclude that “the benefit was clinically meaningful across all subgroups” (1, p. 428).

Or, in the superscript style:

The authors conclude that “the benefit was clinically meaningful across all subgroups”¹⁽ᵖ⁴²⁸⁾.

Paraphrases do not require a page number. Still, including one is often a good idea for long reviews or guidelines — examiners who want to look up the passage will thank you.

What Vancouver doesn’t solve: the content question

The Vancouver style makes sure the reader can find the source. What it does not say: whether the claim you attach to the source actually appears there. In clinical theses this is the most common mistake and the one with the biggest consequences. A sentence like “Metformin reduces cardiovascular mortality by 36% (12)” is formally fine as long as number 12 points at a real study — but factually wrong if that exact figure does not appear in the study and comes instead from a press release, a secondary summary, or a misreading.

Plagiarism software does not catch this, and neither does a reference manager. Both check form and text overlap, never content.

For a quick scan you don’t need to upload anything: the free Quick Check analyses your reference list in the browser and flags problematic entries — sources that cannot be located as given, or references pointing to the wrong volume or DOI. For the full content check, upload your thesis and the cited PDFs to Acurio — every reference is matched against its source, claim against passage, including the page you cite.

Checklist before submission

In-text numbers follow the order of first appearance.
Each number appears exactly once in the reference list — numbering has no gaps.
Up to six authors are written out; from seven onwards, et al. applies.
Journal abbreviations follow NLM, not the Zotero default.
Volume, issue, and page range are complete for every journal article.
DOI or URL is given for sources available online.
Hyphenated number ranges genuinely cover every source in between.

If you walk through these points with a finger on the page you are formally safe. The content side — whether every number points to a source that actually says what you claim — belongs to a second pair of eyes or to a tool built for exactly that job.