APA 7, ISO 690, Vancouver: how to cite your sources properly

Your instructor asked you to cite your sources “in APA” or “in Vancouver,” and you’re not exactly sure what that changes in your bibliography. Good news: the three most commonly used styles in France answer the same need (letting a reader track down your sources), just with different formatting. Here’s how they work, with real examples drawn from university library guides.

Why the style isn’t a minor detail

Three principles come up in every university library guide: consistency (one single format for a given document type throughout your bibliography), completeness (never omit a required element), and honesty (never make up a missing piece of information like a page number or a date). This last point matters: if a DOI, page number, or year is missing, good practice is to note “to be completed,” never to guess.

APA 7th edition

This is the most widely used style in the humanities, psychology, and education sciences. In-text citation uses (Author, year), and the final bibliography is sorted alphabetically by author. Here are real examples drawn from a university library guide (HEC Montréal):

Journal article:

Terracciano, A., Abdel-Khalek, A. M., Adam, N., et al. (2005). National character does not reflect mean personality trait levels in 49 cultures. Science, 310(1), 96–100. doi:10.1126/science.1117199 In-text citation: (Terracciano et al., 2005)

Book:

Ferris, M. C., Mangasarian, O. L., & Wright, S. J. (2008). Linear programming with MATLAB (2nd ed.). Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. In-text citation: (Ferris et al., 2008)

Web page:

Martin Lillie, C. M. (2016, December 30). Be kind to yourself: How self-compassion can improve your resiliency. Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/… In-text citation: (Martin Lillie, 2016)

Thesis:

Hollander, M. M. (2012). Resistance to authority: Methodological innovations and new lessons from the Milgram experiment (Publication No. 10289373) [Doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. In-text citation: (Hollander, 2012)

One special case worth knowing if you use a generative AI tool in your work (and disclose it, as most university charters require): APA provides a dedicated reference format, along the lines of OpenAI. (2024). ChatGPT (version) [Large language model]. URL — the tool is cited like a piece of software, never as the author of your ideas.

ISO 690

This is the international standard, adopted in France under the reference NF Z 44-005, used mainly in literature, languages, history, and the arts. It allows three in-text citation systems: name-date (the “Harvard system”), numeric (numbers in brackets), or footnotes. One typographic rule worth remembering, noted by a university library guide (BU Lorraine): the title of a standalone document (book, journal, thesis) is written in italics, while the title of an article or a chapter — which doesn’t exist as a standalone item — is not. For an electronic resource, you systematically add the notation [online] after the title, and the access date in brackets before the URL.

The general layout of an ISO 690 reference follows this order: AUTHOR. Title. Edition statement. Place: publisher, year. Pagination. (Series). Identifier (DOI, ISBN, ISSN).

Vancouver

This is the dominant style in medicine and biomedical sciences, required by many faculties for practice-based doctoral theses (thèses d’exercice, the clinical dissertation French health students write to practice). Its distinctive feature: in-text citation uses a number in parentheses or superscript, assigned in order of appearance in the text — not alphabetical order. The same number reappears every time the same source is cited again. Here are real examples, drawn from a health sciences university library guide (BU Lyon 1):

Journal article:

Halpern SD, Ubel PA, Caplan AL. Solid-organ transplantation in HIV-infected patients. N Engl J Med. 2002;347(4):284-7.

Book:

Bonnet P-A. La bibliothérapie en médecine générale. Montpellier, France: Sauramps Médical, 2013. 81 p.

Website:

HAS. Commission de la transparence Avis 1er avril 2015 [Online]. 2015 [cited 2016 Jan 20]. Available: http://www.has-sante.fr/…

Thesis:

Dugay J. Intégration et mesures de magnéto-transport de nano-objets magnétiques obtenus par voie chimique [Doctoral thesis]. Toulouse, France: Institut national des sciences appliquées; 2012.

A rule specific to Vancouver: beyond 6 authors for an article (3 for a book), only the first names are cited, followed by “et al.”

How to choose if no one has told you

In order: (1) your field often has a dominant style (Vancouver in health sciences, APA in the humanities and social sciences, ISO 690 in literature and the arts); (2) your institution or department may require a specific style in its thesis-writing guide — check before choosing; (3) absent any instruction, a tool like Zotero lets you generate your bibliography in the requested style without reformatting everything by hand, provided you check that every imported reference is complete.

Key takeaways

• The three principles common to every style: consistency, completeness, honesty — never invent information to fill a gap.
• APA 7: (Author, year) citation, alphabetical order, widely used in humanities and social sciences and psychology.
• ISO 690: the international standard (NF Z 44-005 in France), three possible citation systems, italic titles only for standalone documents.
• Vancouver: citation by number in order of appearance, dominant in medicine and health sciences.
• Always check the style required by your institution or field before choosing, rather than guessing.

To format your references in the required style, without ever inventing a missing DOI or page number, the bibliographie-normes skill applies exactly these rules to the information you give it.