Citing other Chicago sources?
The full Chicago Citation Generator handles books, websites, podcasts, films, and more.
Paste a DOI, article title, or journal URL. Get a clean Chicago bibliography entry plus the full footnote and short-form note. Works for both notes-bibliography and author-date. Free, no signup.
Tip: A DOI is the cleanest input — we'll pull authors, journal, volume, issue, pages, and year automatically.
Chicago has two systems and you need to know which one you're using. Notes-bibliography (humanities) uses a numbered footnote in the text, a full citation at the bottom of the page, and a bibliography at the end. Author-date (sciences, social sciences) uses a parenthetical (Author Year, Page) in the text and a reference list at the end. The two systems share almost the same bibliography/reference-list entry — the year just moves position. Below are examples for both.
Acemoglu, Daron, and Pascual Restrepo. "Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets." Journal of Political Economy 128, no. 6 (2020): 2188–2244. https://doi.org/10.1086/705716.
1. Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo, "Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets," Journal of Political Economy 128, no. 6 (2020): 2200, https://doi.org/10.1086/705716.
2. Acemoglu and Restrepo, "Robots and Jobs," 2210.
Acemoglu, Daron, and Pascual Restrepo. 2020. "Robots and Jobs: Evidence from US Labor Markets." Journal of Political Economy 128, no. 6: 2188–2244. https://doi.org/10.1086/705716.
128.no.: 128, no. 6.(2020).pp.: : 2188–2244. Footnotes use the specific cited page; bibliography uses the full range.https://doi.org/…The bibliography uses periods to separate major elements: author. "title." Journal vol, no. (year): pages. URL. The footnote uses commas, and puts the publication info in parentheses: author, "title," Journal vol, no. (year): page, URL. It looks fussy but it's the rule — the period vs. comma signals whether you're reading a sentence-style footnote or a list-style bibliography entry.
For author-date, the in-text citation is just (Author Year, Page). (Acemoglu and Restrepo 2020, 2200) for a specific page; (Acemoglu and Restrepo 2020) for the work as a whole. Three or more authors get et al.: (Smith et al. 2023, 14). If the author's name appears in your sentence, only the year and page go in parentheses: Acemoglu and Restrepo (2020, 2200) find that…
(Acemoglu and Restrepo 2020, 2200)
Chicago 17 prefers DOIs over URLs for journal articles. Format the DOI as a full URL: https://doi.org/10.xxxx/yyyy — not doi:10.xxxx/yyyy. If no DOI exists, use the article's URL on the publisher's website. For articles accessed through a database (JSTOR, ProQuest), use the DOI if available; if not, the database URL is acceptable. You don't need to name the database — Chicago changed this rule in the 17th edition.
For articles published online ahead of an issue, omit the volume/issue/pages and replace with online publication ahead of print or use whatever metadata is available (typically year and DOI). For forthcoming articles you've cited from a preprint or draft, mark them forthcoming in place of the year.
doi:10.1234/abc. Use the full URL form: https://doi.org/10.1234/abc.vol, no. X is required when the journal has issues (most do).p. or pp. in journal citations. Just the page numbers after the colon.Paste a DOI and we resolve it through Crossref to pull authors, article title, journal, volume, issue, year, pages, and the canonical DOI URL. Paste a title and we search Crossref, Semantic Scholar, and OpenAlex to find the right paper. The CSL engine renders Chicago formatting for both systems — bibliography entry, footnote, short-form note, and author-date variant. Pick whichever your assignment uses.
Whichever your assignment specifies. Humanities (history, literature, art history, religion) typically use notes-bibliography. Sciences and social sciences typically use author-date. The two are very similar in form but differ in how citations appear in the text. Don't mix — pick one and stick to it.
Use the most stable URL you can find — usually the article's landing page on the publisher's website. If accessed through a library database, the database URL is acceptable. Don't use Google Scholar links or PDF mirrors. Chicago 17 dropped the rule that you had to name the database — just give the URL.
Same information, different punctuation, and different author-name order. The bibliography puts the author last-name-first and uses periods as separators. The footnote puts the author first-name-first, uses commas, and wraps the publication info in parentheses. The footnote also gives the specific page being cited; the bibliography gives the full page range of the article.
For the second and later footnotes on the same source: Author Last Name, "Short Article Title," page. Example: Acemoglu and Restrepo, "Robots and Jobs," 2210. The short title should be three or four key words from the full title. Chicago 17 abandoned ibid. in favor of short-form notes.
Two or three: list all. Bibliography: Acemoglu, Daron, and Pascual Restrepo. Footnote: Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo. Four to ten: bibliography lists all; footnote uses first author + et al.. Eleven or more: bibliography lists first seven + et al.; footnote uses first author + et al..
Include whatever metadata the publisher has assigned — usually author, title, journal, year, and DOI. Skip volume, issue, and pages. You can add online publication ahead of print in place of the missing volume/issue if you want to be explicit, though it's often unnecessary.
The full Chicago Citation Generator handles books, websites, podcasts, films, and more.
Need APA, MLA, or Harvard for the same paper? The APA Journal Article Generator, MLA Journal Article Generator, and Harvard Journal Article Generator all read the same DOI.
For books, use the Chicago Book Citation Generator.
Our How to cite a journal article walkthrough covers every variant — special issues, preprints, retractions — with examples.
Use the Chicago Footnote Generator when you need the footnote and short-form note for any Chicago source.
Got a bibliography entry and want to confirm it? Run it through the AI Citation Checker.