Harvard to Vancouver Citation Conversion allows eXtyles users to change name–date (Harvard-style) citations to numbered (Vancouver-style) citations. The reference list is also numbered and reordered according to the sequence of the in-text citations.

All citations are converted to baseline numbers in square brackets. Convert/Clean Numbered Citation Style should then be run to correct the format of the bracketed citations (e.g., “[1, 2, 3]” to “[1–3]”) and, if necessary, to change the citations to a different numbered style (e.g., superscript numbers).

How to use

To use Harvard to Vancouver Citation Conversion:

1. Run eXtyles up through Bibliographic References processing and PubMed and CrossRef Reference Correction or PubMed and CrossRef Checking (if applicable).

2. Run Citation Matching. Choose the first option for name–date citations.

3. Resolve any reference citation errors flagged by Citation Matching (in particular, any citations that have not been color coded should be corrected and styled with the cite_bib character style — either manually or by rerunning Citation Matching—before running the conversion, and all references should be cited).

4. Run Harvard to Vancouver Citation Conversion from the eXtyles Advanced Processing menu. This step will:

   1. Convert all citations from name–date to baseline numbers in square brackets 

   2. Add a number at the start of each reference 

   3. Resort the reference list so that all references are listed in the order in which they are cited.

5. Run Convert/Clean Numbered Citation Style (see the next section for more information). Select “[Numbers in brackets].” eXtyles will automatically convert the citations to the correct style for your publication (e.g., superscript numbers); it will also reformat number series (e.g., “[1, 2, 3]” to “[1–3]”).

Limitations of conversion

Harvard-style citations can be more complex than numbered styles, and there are a handful of scenarios in which the automatic conversion will require manual intervention. Some known issues include:

• A Harvard to Vancouver conversion that results in out-of-order numbers (e.g., “[5, 7, 6, 8]”) will not be consolidated (e.g., to “[5–8]”); this reformatting will need to be done manually.
• Harvard-style citations occasionally contain surrounding text—for example, “(see Smith 2000)” or “(e.g., Jones, 2010)”—that will be preserved in the conversion and may not be appropriate to retain in a numbered citation; you should edit this text according to your style requirements.
• Harvard-style citations may also include information such as figure, table, or page numbers (e.g., “Bufe et al., 1994, p. 32”) that will be preserved in the conversion but may not be appropriate to retain in a numbered citation; you should edit this text according to your style requirements.

Harvard to Vancouver Citation Conversion is designed to complete the bulk of the work of converting from a name–date to a numbered citation style, but users should expect some manual cleanup to be necessary.