DOI to MLA Converter
Free. No signup. Runs in your browser.
Paste a DOI or a doi.org link and get the MLA 9 works cited entry and its in-text citation. Authors, title, journal, volume, issue, date and pages come from the record the publisher deposited with CrossRef. Paste up to 50 DOIs at once for a sorted Works Cited list.
How to convert a DOI to MLA
Step 1
Paste the DOI
Any form: 10.1126/science.aaa8415, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa8415 or doi:10.1126/science.aaa8415. For several, one per line.
Step 2
Pick the output
Single citation gives the works cited entry; Reference list sorts several into a Works Cited list; In-text citation gives (Jordan and Mitchell 255).
Step 3
Copy
The list keeps its italics and hanging indent when pasted into Word or Google Docs.
What you get
A live lookup of 10.1126/science.aaa8415:
Jordan, M. I., and T. M. Mitchell. “Machine Learning: Trends, Perspectives, and Prospects.” Science, vol. 349, no. 6245, Jul. 2015, pp. 255–60, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaa8415.
In text, quoting page 256: (Jordan and Mitchell 256)
Three details in that entry are correct MLA, and are often "fixed" by mistake:
- pp. 255–60. MLA shortens the second number of a page range to the digits that change.
- The full stop after the DOI. Every works cited entry ends with one, even after a link.
- The DOI instead of the journal's web address. MLA prefers the DOI whenever a source has one, so the publisher URL is not needed.
Where to find a paper's DOI
A DOI starts with 10. and a slash. It is on the article's web page, under the title or in the "Cite" box, and on the first page of the PDF. A publisher's page address usually does not contain it, so copy the DOI itself.
Frequently asked questions
Usually a character lost while copying from a PDF, or a DOI registered with DataCite rather than CrossRef, such as a dataset on Zenodo. arXiv's own 10.48550 DOIs are looked up on arXiv. The result shows the reason for each DOI that fails, and the rest of the batch still converts.
No. MLA treats the DOI as the location. Only a source without a DOI needs its URL.
MLA 9. For a journal article the entry is the same in both editions.
Yes, up to 50, one per line. Choose Reference list and you get them sorted, with "———." for a repeated author, as on a finished Works Cited page.
Yes, change the Style menu, or use DOI to APA.
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