How to cite a book chapter in Vancouver
A chapter from an edited book, with its own authors. Numbered style used across biomedical journals.
Quick answer
To cite a book chapter in Vancouver, include the author(s), year, title, and container or publisher details. A concrete example is below.
Example
1. Locke EA, Latham GP. A theory of goal setting and task performance. In: Miner JB, editor. Organizational Behavior: Essential Theories of Motivation and Leadership. Routledge; 2015. p. 122–141.
This example is rendered with the official CSL definition for Vancouver. For the exact style required by your journal, paste your references into DEEPNOTIS and pick that style from the dropdown — the app covers 2,800+ variants.
What you need
For a book chapter, Vancouver expects these fields at minimum:
- Chapter author(s)
- Year
- Chapter title
- Book editor(s)
- Book title
- Page range of the chapter
- Publisher
Common mistakes
- Writing out author first names. Vancouver uses initials without periods ('Smith J').
- Italicizing the journal name. Vancouver uses Index Medicus abbreviation without italics.
- Forgetting the DOI. When a DOI exists, most styles now require it (usually as a full https://doi.org/… URL).
- Inconsistent capitalization. APA uses sentence case for titles; MLA and Chicago use title case. Mixing them is the single most common style error.
Cite every reference in Vancouver — at once
Upload your .docx and DEEPNOTIS re-formats every citation in Vancouver, automatically. Free up to 5 documents.
Last updated: 5 May 2026