To cite a PDF, cite the document it contains: a journal article, a report, a book chapter, a government document or a set of lecture slides. No major style has a “PDF” format, and you usually do not write the word “PDF” at all. Use the template for that kind of source and end it with the DOI or the URL where you found the file. Most stand-alone PDFs on the web are reports, so the templates below use a report. The examples use invented authors and links; swap in your own details.
Quick answer and templates
| Style | Reference format (report in a PDF) | In the text |
|---|---|---|
| APA 7 | Author, A. A. (Year). Title of report (Report No. 00). Publisher. URL | (Author, Year, p. 12) |
| MLA 9 | Author Last, First. Title of Report. Publisher, Year, URL. | (Author 12) |
| Chicago 17 (bibliography) | Author Last, First. Title of Report. City: Publisher, Year. URL. | Numbered footnote |
Work out what the PDF is
Look at the first page and the page headers, then cite the PDF as that kind of source.
| What you see | Cite it as |
|---|---|
| A journal name, volume, issue and a DOI | Journal article |
| An organization’s logo, a report number, a title page | Report |
| A chapter number, a book title in the header, editors | Book chapter, or the whole book if you used all of it |
| A government department or agency as the publisher | Government document (in APA, a report with the agency as author) |
| Slides or notes from a class | Lecture slides or course material |
| A page from a website saved or exported as a PDF | Web page. See how to cite a website. |
How to cite a PDF in APA 7
APA does not include the file format in a reference. Report and book titles are in italics and sentence case. If the report has a number, put it in parentheses after the title. When the organization is both the author and the publisher, leave the publisher out so the name is not repeated.
A report
Rivera, J., & Okafor, N. (2023). Sleep and study performance in first-year students (Report No. 14). Example Education Institute. https://www.example.org/reports/sleep-study.pdf
A journal article you downloaded as a PDF
Rivera, J. (2022). Sleep habits and exam results in first-year students. Example Journal of Education, 18(2), 45–61. https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx
In-text citation
- Parenthetical: (Rivera & Okafor, 2023)
- Narrative: Rivera and Okafor (2023) found that…
- Direct quote: (Rivera & Okafor, 2023, p. 12)
A page number is required for a direct quote and optional for a paraphrase. See the Purdue OWL report examples for APA for more variations, or format your source with our APA citation generator.
How to cite a PDF in MLA 9
MLA puts the title of a stand-alone document in italics and in title case, then the publisher, the year and the URL without https://. If an organization is both author and publisher, start with the title and give the organization once, as publisher.
Rivera, Jordan, and Nia Okafor. Sleep and Study Performance in First-Year Students. Example Education Institute, 2023, www.example.org/reports/sleep-study.pdf.
That format is for a direct link to the file. If you downloaded the PDF from a page on a website, the MLA Style Center adds the website as a second container, and you may end the entry with “PDF download”:
Rivera, Jordan, and Nia Okafor. Sleep and Study Performance in First-Year Students. Example Education Institute, 2023. Example Education Institute, www.example.org/reports/sleep-study. PDF download.
In-text citation
Give the author’s last name and the page number, with no comma and no “p.”:
- (Rivera and Okafor 12)
For other source types, use the MLA citation generator.
How to cite a PDF in Chicago 17
In the notes and bibliography system, a report is cited like a book: title in italics, then the place of publication, publisher and year, with the URL at the end. The note gives the page you used.
Footnote
1. Jordan Rivera and Nia Okafor, Sleep and Study Performance in First-Year Students (Boston: Example Education Institute, 2023), 12, https://www.example.org/reports/sleep-study.pdf.
Shortened note (later citations)
2. Rivera and Okafor, Sleep and Study Performance, 15.
Bibliography entry
Rivera, Jordan, and Nia Okafor. Sleep and Study Performance in First-Year Students. Boston: Example Education Institute, 2023. https://www.example.org/reports/sleep-study.pdf.
In Chicago’s author-date system the in-text citation is (Rivera and Okafor 2023, 12), and the year moves up to follow the authors in the reference list. The 18th edition, published in 2024, no longer requires the place of publication, so check which edition your course follows. The Chicago citation quick guide shows journal articles and book chapters.
PDFs with no author, no date or no page numbers
| Missing | APA 7 | MLA 9 | Chicago 17 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Author | Use the organization. If none, start with the title: Title of report. (Year). Publisher. URL | Start with the title. | Use the organization. If none, start with the title. |
| Date | (n.d.) | Leave it out and add “Accessed Day Month Year.” at the end. | Use n.d. for the year and add “Accessed Month Day, Year.” before the URL. |
| Page numbers | For a quote, give a section name or paragraph: (Rivera, 2023, para. 4). | Author only, or a numbered chapter or section: (Rivera, ch. 2). | Give a chapter or section heading in the note, or leave the locator out. |
With no author, the in-text citation uses a shortened title: (Sleep and Study Performance, 2023) in APA and (Sleep and Study Performance 12) in MLA. Before you settle for “no author”, check the title page, the last page and the page the file was linked from. Many PDFs that look anonymous were written by the organization that published them.
When the PDF has page numbers, use the numbers printed on the pages, not the page count shown by your PDF reader. A journal article PDF keeps the journal’s own page numbers, so a quote may be on p. 47 even though it is the third page of the file.
A PDF from a course site, or one that is not public
A published work your instructor uploaded. If the PDF is a scan of a book chapter or a copy of a journal article, cite the original chapter or article. The course site is only where you picked it up.
Material your instructor wrote, such as slides or a handout. In APA, if your readers can log in to the same course site, cite it with a description in square brackets, the name of the site and its login page URL:
Rivera, J. (2024). Week 4: Memory and sleep [Lecture slides]. Canvas. https://canvas.example.edu/login
If your readers cannot get to the file, APA treats it as a personal communication: cite it in the text only, as (J. Rivera, personal communication, March 5, 2024), with no reference list entry. The APA Style page on classroom and intranet sources explains the rule. In MLA, the course platform is the container for material created for the course. Only list your instructor as the author if you know they wrote it.
DOI or URL?
- Use the DOI if there is one. Journal articles and many books have a DOI printed on the first page. Write it as a link: https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx. It still works if the file moves.
- Use the URL if there is no DOI. Give the address a reader can open without logging in. APA does not want both a DOI and a URL.
- Do not use an address from a library database or a search result. Those links often stop working when your session ends. If a database article has no DOI, APA ends the reference after the page range.
Generate the citation automatically
The free Plagiarism Checker Plus citation generator formats references in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, AMA and ACS. If your PDF is a journal article or a book, it can fill in the details from the DOI or ISBN.
- Work out what the PDF is, using the table above.
- Choose your style, then enter the DOI or ISBN, or type the details in.
- Check the result against the PDF’s first page, then copy it into your reference list.