Good professional writing shows its sources. Reports, white papers, industry articles, policy briefs, grant proposals and long-form content all lean on data and published work — and every one of those claims needs a reference that is correct and consistently formatted.
ClearPen includes a citation generator alongside its humanizer and AI detector, so the sources in a draft are handled with the same care as its prose.
Supported Citation Styles
| Style | Common in |
|---|---|
| APA 7th | Social sciences, psychology, health, many corporate research reports |
| MLA 9th | Humanities, publishing, arts and culture writing |
| Chicago (author-date) | Business, history, the sciences, many publishers |
| Harvard (Cite Them Right) | General-purpose author-date referencing, widely used in the UK and Australia |
| IEEE | Engineering, computer science, technical documentation |
Each style is rendered from its official CSL file by a standards-compliant citation processor — the same Citation Style Language used by Zotero, Mendeley and pandoc. That means punctuation, ordering, italics and author formatting follow the style's rules rather than an approximation.
What You Can Cite From
ClearPen accepts whatever you have to hand and picks the most authoritative route to accurate metadata:
| Input | How ClearPen gets the details | Confidence |
|---|---|---|
| DOI or arXiv ID | Looked up in the DOI registry and Crossref | High |
| ISBN | Looked up in book databases | High |
| URL | Uses an embedded DOI or the publisher's structured metadata where available; otherwise reads and normalises the page | High or low |
| PDF upload | Uses an embedded DOI where available; otherwise reads the document's metadata and text | High or low |
| Pasted reference | Parses an existing reference in any format | Low |
| Manual form | You enter the fields directly | High |
"Low" confidence does not mean wrong — it means the details were inferred rather than pulled from an authoritative database, so ClearPen prompts you to check them before you rely on the reference.
Source Types Covered
ClearPen recognises the source types professional writers cite most often, including:
- Journal, magazine and news articles
- Books and book chapters
- Conference papers and reports
- Web pages and blog posts
- Datasets
- Films, videos, broadcasts and audio
- Speeches and encyclopedia entries
How It Works
- Open Citations in the ClearPen dashboard.
- Choose a style.
- Paste a DOI, ISBN, URL or reference — or upload a PDF.
- Review the details and the confidence rating, and edit any field if needed.
- Copy the reference-list entry and the in-text citation, or save the source to your library.
- Use Copy all to export your whole reference list at once.
Because every saved source is stored as structured data rather than formatted text, you can switch any saved reference to a different style — APA to Chicago, say — and it is re-rendered on the spot. Nothing has to be looked up again.
Citations and Humanizing, Together
References are exactly the kind of text a rewriter must never touch. When you humanize a draft in ClearPen, you can protect exact text — reference entries, quotations and figures — so it passes through the rewrite word for word while the surrounding prose is refined.
Plans
The free plan includes a monthly allowance of saved citations. Starter, Pro and Power include unlimited citations. See pricing for current details.
Format your references in seconds
Generate APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard or IEEE references from a DOI, URL or PDF. Free plan, no credit card.
Related Reading
Frequently asked questions
- Which citation styles does ClearPen support?
- APA 7th edition, MLA 9th edition, Chicago (author-date), Harvard (Cite Them Right) and IEEE. Each is rendered from the official CSL style file, the same standard used by reference managers such as Zotero and Mendeley.
- What can I generate a citation from in ClearPen?
- A DOI or arXiv ID, an ISBN, a web page URL, an uploaded PDF, pasted reference text, or a manual form. DOIs and ISBNs are looked up in authoritative bibliographic databases; other inputs are parsed and flagged for you to double-check.
- Does ClearPen create in-text citations?
- Yes. Every source gets both a full reference-list entry and a matching in-text citation in the selected style.
- Can I switch a citation to a different style?
- Yes. ClearPen stores each source as structured metadata, so a saved source can be re-rendered in any supported style without looking it up again.
- Is the citation generator free?
- The free plan includes a monthly allowance of saved citations. Paid plans include unlimited citations.