Clinical Trial Citation Generator

Your citations

Enter the trial's title and its registration number to see your citations.

How to Use the Clinical Trial Citation Generator

1. 1. Look up an NCT number, or start by hand. Type a ClinicalTrials.gov number such as NCT04381936 and press Look up — the tool asks ClinicalTrials.gov's public API for that one record and fills in the form. For another registry, choose it from the list and type the details.
2. 2. Fix the title's capitals. Registries show titles with every word capitalized. All three styles want sentence case — capitals only for the first word, proper nouns and acronyms — so Randomised Evaluation of COVID-19 Therapy becomes Randomised evaluation of COVID-19 therapy.
3. 3. Check the responsible party and the dates. The author is the record's responsible party: the sponsor, or the investigator when the record names one. Use the First Posted and Last Update Posted dates on the record, and the date you viewed it.
4. 4. Copy the style you need. Each reference copies with its italics intact. AMA and Vancouver are numbered styles, so in your text the citation is the reference number.

What a Trial Registration Reference Contains

A registration record is a trial's public summary — design, outcomes, status, sometimes results — kept up to date by the people running the trial. Every style needs the same facts: who is responsible for the record, its title, the registry and the number it assigned, the record's dates, and where to find it.

APA 7 has no clinical-trial example of its own, so the generator uses APA's webpage format: the responsible party as author, the date of the last update (APA dates a page by its update when the update belongs to the content you cite), the title in italics, the registration number in parentheses — where APA puts ERIC and report numbers — the registry as the site name, and the URL. If your instructor prefers another form, follow them. AMA 11 cites a trial record much like a website and includes the identifier: the title, the registry's identifier, the updated and accessed dates, then the URL. Vancouver follows NLM's Citing Medicine, whose ClinicalTrials.gov example names the responsible party, gives the date posted with the update and citation dates in square brackets, names the registry as a database and ends with the identifier.

Clinical Trial Citation Examples

The RECOVERY trial of COVID-19 treatments, registered on ClinicalTrials.gov by the University of Oxford and viewed on October 5, 2026:

Citing Medicine's own example is a record whose responsible party is the principal investigator, Richard Cannon. With the record's current dates, a person as author looks like this:

Registration Record or Results Paper?

Cite the source you actually used. The registration is the right source for what the investigators registered — the planned outcomes, the sample size, the recruitment status, a change to the protocol. Once the results are published, cite the journal article for the findings; the record's publications section or PubMed will lead you to it, and the PMID Citation Generator will format it. The ICMJE Recommendations also ask authors to give a trial's registration number the first time they refer to the trial by its acronym — so write RECOVERY (NCT04381936) in your text even when you cite the published paper.

Common Mistakes

• Citing the registry instead of the record. ClinicalTrials.gov is the database; your reference is one record in it, with its own number and dates.
• Keeping the registry's title case. Registries capitalize every word. APA, AMA and Vancouver want sentence case.
• Dating the citation by the trial. The start and completion dates describe the study. The reference is dated by the record: when it was first posted and last updated.
• A mistyped or invented number. Copy the NCT, ISRCTN or EudraCT number from the record itself. A wrong digit sends readers to a different trial.
• Citing the record for published results. When a results paper exists, cite the paper for its findings.
• A period after the URL. APA and AMA end the reference with the URL. Vancouver ends with the identifier and a period.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I cite a ClinicalTrials.gov record in APA 7?

Give the responsible party as author, the date the record was last updated, the title in italics with the NCT number in parentheses, ClinicalTrials.gov as the site name, and the record's URL. For the RECOVERY trial that is University of Oxford. (2026, April 21). Randomised evaluation of COVID-19 therapy (RECOVERY) (NCT04381936). ClinicalTrials.gov, followed by the URL — and (University of Oxford, 2026) in the text.

How do you cite a clinical trial in AMA style?

AMA cites a registration much like a website and recommends including the identifier. Start with the trial's title, then ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: and the NCT number, the date the record was updated, the date you accessed it, and the URL last. In the text, cite it by its superscript reference number.

How do I cite a clinical trial in Vancouver style?

Follow NLM's Citing Medicine: the responsible party, the title, the date the record was first posted with the last-updated and cited dates in square brackets, then In: ClinicalTrials.gov [Internet]. Bethesda (MD): U.S. National Library of Medicine, the URL after Available from:, and the identifier at the end. Number the reference in the order you first cite it.

Where do I find a trial's registration number?

On the record itself: a ClinicalTrials.gov record shows its NCT number under the title and in its web address, clinicaltrials.gov/study/ followed by the number. Published trial reports print the number in the abstract, usually after the words Trial Registration. ISRCTN, EudraCT and ACTRN numbers appear the same way on their registries.

Who is the author of a trial registration?

The record's responsible party — usually the sponsor, or the investigator when the record names one as responsible. NLM's example uses the principal investigator. For a sponsor-run record such as RECOVERY, the sponsor, the University of Oxford, is the author.

Does the NCT lookup send my information anywhere?

Only the NCT number you type, which your browser sends to ClinicalTrials.gov's public API at clinicaltrials.gov/api/v2. The citations themselves are formatted in your browser, and nothing you type into the form is uploaded.