OSCOLA 4th edition references and footnotes from a DOI, ISBN, URL or title, with the rules explained. Export the list to Word.
Let’s cite!
Paste a DOI, ISBN, PubMed or arXiv ID, a web address, or just a title. Your list is saved in this browser, so you can close the tab and come back to it.
Formatted by citeproc-js © Frank Bennett, unmodified, under the CPAL — citeproc-js implements the Citation Style Language. Styles from the CSL project, CC BY-SA 3.0 (our copies).
Paste a DOI, an ISBN, a link or a title and the tool finds the publisher's own record for it and formats it in OSCOLA 4th edition — the notes system used in law schools and legal journals in the UK, Ireland and much of the Commonwealth. The bibliography entry and the footnote come together, and the rules are those of the OSCOLA: The Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities, 4th edition (2012), published by the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford. The 4th edition was published in 2012 and is the current one.
OSCOLA and its international-law supplement are published free by the Oxford Law Faculty. The tool's legal case, statute and bill source types carry the fields OSCOLA needs.
Three steps, about twenty seconds a source.
A DOI, an ISBN, a PubMed or arXiv ID, a web address, or a title. OSCOLA is already selected on this page. The tool works out what you pasted and asks the right catalogue — Crossref, OpenLibrary, PubMed, DataCite or Semantic Scholar — for the record.
Each source gets a card showing what the catalogue held and what the tool changed to fit OSCOLA: a DOI reduced to its bare form, a page range tidied. Every change can be undone with one click if the record was right as it was.
Copy the list with its formatting into Word or Google Docs, or download a .docx with the numbering and spacing already set. BibTeX, RIS and CSL-JSON exports carry the same data into Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote or LaTeX.
The rules the tool applies, from the OSCOLA: The Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities, 4th edition (2012).
Six real sources — two journal articles, a book, a chapter, a web page and a conference paper — formatted by the same engine that runs the generator above. Nothing here was typed by hand, so what you see is what you get.
AI Writing Assistant, ‘Free AI Writing Tools: What Each Does and When to Use It’ (AI Writing Assistant) <https://www.aiwritingassistant.net/tools.html> accessed 18 September 2026
Footnote: AI Writing Assistant, ‘Free AI Writing Tools: What Each Does and When to Use It’ (AI Writing Assistant) <https://www.aiwritingassistant.net/tools.html> accessed 18 September 2026.
Golder SA and Macy MW, ‘Diurnal and Seasonal Mood Vary with Work, Sleep, and Daylength Across Diverse Cultures’ (2011) 333 Science 1878 <https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1202775>
Footnote, citing page 1880: Scott A Golder and Michael W Macy, ‘Diurnal and Seasonal Mood Vary with Work, Sleep, and Daylength Across Diverse Cultures’ (2011) 333 Science 1878, 1880 <https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1202775>.
Grice HP, ‘Logic and Conversation’ in Peter Cole and Jerry L Morgan (eds), Syntax and Semantics, Volume 3: Speech Acts (Academic Press 1975)
Footnote, citing page 45: H Paul Grice, ‘Logic and Conversation’ in Peter Cole and Jerry L Morgan (eds), Syntax and Semantics, Volume 3: Speech Acts (Academic Press 1975) 45.
Kahneman D, Knetsch JL and Thaler RH, ‘Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias’ (1991) 5 Journal of Economic Perspectives 193 <https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.5.1.193>
Footnote: Daniel Kahneman, Jack L Knetsch and Richard H Thaler, ‘Anomalies: The Endowment Effect, Loss Aversion, and Status Quo Bias’ (1991) 5 Journal of Economic Perspectives 193 <https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.5.1.193>.
Kuhn TS, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (4th edn, University of Chicago Press 2012)
Footnote, citing page 12: Thomas S Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (4th edn, University of Chicago Press 2012) 12.
Vaswani A and others, ‘Attention Is All You Need’ Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 30 (Curran Associates 2017)
Footnote: Ashish Vaswani and others, ‘Attention Is All You Need’ Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 30 (Curran Associates 2017).
Five errors markers see most often, and what the tool does about each.
OSCOLA is punctuation-light: Jerry L Morgan, 4th edn, not Jerry L. Morgan or 4th ed.
OSCOLA writes and others for a work with four or more authors.
Article titles take single quotation marks; a quotation inside them takes double.
A case decided since 2001 is cited by its neutral citation first, [2012] UKSC 1, and the law report after it. The tool's legal case form has a field for each.
Cases and legislation go in their own tables, not among the books and articles.
If your handbook names one of these instead, its page opens the generator with that style selected.
Chicago notes and bibliography is the nearest general-purpose footnote style, with fuller punctuation and no special forms for legal authorities. Open the Chicago page.
Some law courses outside the UK use Harvard author–date rather than footnotes; if yours does, the Harvard page applies. Open the Harvard page.
Yes. Every style, every source type and every export is free, with no account and no daily allowance, because the formatting runs in your browser rather than on our servers. Your list is saved in this browser and never sent to us.
The 4th edition (2012). A separate 2006 supplement covers the citation of international law and remains current.
OSCOLA cites in footnotes rather than in parentheses. A footnote number in the text, placed after the punctuation, with the citation in the footnote and a full stop at its end. The tool prints the full footnote under each entry in the bibliography pane, and the export keeps it.
Paste the address and the tool reads the page's title, author, site name and date where the page declares them, then formats it. The OSCOLA form of a web page with an organisation as author and no date is: AI Writing Assistant, ‘Free AI Writing Tools: What Each Does and When to Use It’ (AI Writing Assistant) <https://www.aiwritingassistant.net/tools.html> accessed 18 September 2026 Check the author and date on the card — pages often leave them out, and the style has a rule for each case.
Yes. Your sources are stored as data, not as formatted text, so choosing another style in the picker re-formats the whole list at once — APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver, or any of the 10,000 Citation Style Language styles the picker searches.
From the OSCOLA: The Oxford University Standard for Citation of Legal Authorities, 4th edition (2012), published by the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, as encoded in the open Citation Style Language style the tool uses. OSCOLA and its international-law supplement are published free by the Oxford Law Faculty. The tool's legal case, statute and bill source types carry the fields OSCOLA needs. Where your department's own guide differs on a detail, the department's guide is the one your marker reads.
Check the essay's grammar, tighten the wording, or summarise a source before you cite it. One plan covers every tool.
Each page opens the generator with that style already selected, shows what the tool prints for six real sources, and explains the style's rules. The picker above the list reaches more than 10,000 styles in all.
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