How to Add Citations in Google Docs
Updated
With the Plagiarism Checker Plus add-on for Google Docs™, open the sidebar and click Cite a source. Enter a website address, DOI or ISBN, pick a style such as APA 7th or MLA 9th, check the details, then click Insert at cursor or Add to references — the add-on files the entry alphabetically, with a hanging indent, under your References, Works Cited or Bibliography heading.
Add a citation in Google Docs
- Open the sidebar: Extensions › Plagiarism Checker Plus › Check this document, and sign in if asked.
- Click Cite a source. (After a plagiarism check you can also click Cite next to a matching source to start with that page.)
- Enter a website address, DOI or ISBN and look it up. No link? Choose Enter details yourself.
- Pick a citation style. Your choice is remembered next time.
- Check the details: authors, title (required), website or publisher, published date, and for web pages the accessed date and address. Fix anything that couldn’t be read from the source — the preview updates as you type.
- To place the entry where you’re writing, click in the document first, then click Insert at cursor.
- To build your bibliography instead, click Add to references.
How Add to references works
- It looks for your last References, Works Cited or Bibliography heading and adds the entry to the list under it, up to the next heading.
- Entries are placed in alphabetical order, with a hanging indent and titles in italics where the style calls for it.
- If the document has no reference list yet, the add-on creates a heading at the end of the document.
- If the same source is already in the list, it tells you instead of adding a duplicate.
Supported styles
APA 7th, MLA 9th, Chicago 17th, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver, AMA, Turabian, CSE, ACS, ASA, APSA, Oxford and ABNT. Formatting uses the same formatter as the Plagiarism Checker Plus citation generator.
In-text citations
The add-on creates full reference entries. Add the matching in-text citation in your sentence yourself — for example (Rivera, 2024) in APA, (Rivera 12) in MLA, or a footnote in Chicago notes style. Use the same author name and year as the reference entry so readers can find it.
Tips for accurate citations
- Prefer a DOI for journal articles. DOI records are usually more complete than web page tags.
- Always review the details. Websites don’t always publish an author or date in a machine-readable way. If you see “Some details couldn’t be read from the source”, fill them in from the page.
- No author? Leave the author blank; the style will start with the title. See How to cite a website for how APA and MLA handle it.
- Follow your instructor’s version. Harvard in particular varies between institutions.