This guide to the Russian GOST citation style is published by EdCitation, whose tools look a reference up in the publisher's record and never write one. GOST is a family of national standards, and two do the work in a Russian paper: GOST R 7.0.100-2018 for the reference list, GOST R 7.0.5-2008 for references in and after the text.
Every status below was read in Rosstandart's catalogue on 26 September 2026, every rule in the standards' texts, and five university libraries are quoted in Russian with our translation. EdCitation's Cite a source does not build GOST entries; Verify references and Find sources work on Russian references, and our runs are quoted exactly, faults included.
Which GOST standards govern Russian references?
The two above. The catalogue of Rosstandart, the Federal Agency on Technical Regulation and Metrology, lists both as Действует (in force); we read it at protect.gost.ru, as the agency's main site refused our connection.
| Standard | Covers | Status |
|---|---|---|
| GOST R 7.0.100-2018 | The reference list | In force from 1 July 2019 (Rosstandart, n.d.-d) |
| GOST R 7.0.5-2008 | In-text, footnote and end references | In force from 1 January 2009 (Rosstandart, n.d.-c) |
| GOST 7.1-2003 | The older list standard | Утратил силу в РФ, not in force in Russia (Rosstandart, n.d.-a) |
| GOST 7.79-2000 | Transliteration | In force from 1 July 2002 (Rosstandart, n.d.-b) |
| GOST R 7.0.108-2022 | References to online documents | In force from 1 June 2022 (Rosstandart, n.d.-e) |
GOST 7.1-2003 and the neighbouring countries
GOST 7.1-2003 is an interstate standard, adopted by the Interstate Council for Standardization in 2003, and Rosstandart marks it as no longer in force in Russia only. Two Russian university libraries say it remains in force in the CIS (Samara State University of Economics Library, 2019; Magnitogorsk State Technical University Library, 2019). We did not read the other member states' catalogues; check your own country's standards body.
A gap between the two Russian standards
GOST R 7.0.5-2008 still sends the writer to GOST 7.1 and GOST 7.80 (Federal Agency on Technical Regulation and Metrology, 2008), neither now in force in Russia. Universities pair GOST R 7.0.5-2008 for references with GOST R 7.0.100-2018 for the list, as the Novosibirsk State Technical University Library (n.d.-a) sets out.
How is a reference built under GOST R 7.0.100-2018?
By areas in a fixed order, each opened by a prescribed punctuation mark. The standard lists the marks, including ". –" (full stop and dash), "/" (slash) and "//" (two slashes), and says their use "не связано с нормами языка" (is not tied to the rules of the language, our translation) (Federal Agency on Technical Regulation and Metrology, 2018). Each mark has a space on both sides, except a full stop or comma, which takes one after.
The slash, the double slash and the dash
- / follows the title and introduces the authors, initials first.
- // joins an article or chapter to the journal or book it appears in. On a new line or in another typeface, "В:" or "In:" may replace it.
- . – opens every area after the first. Where areas start on new lines or in another typeface, a full stop alone may replace it.
The standard prints a long dash; the university guides quoted here type an en dash, as this page does.
What happened to [Текст] and [Электронный ресурс]?
GOST R 7.0.100-2018 removed them. The Samara State University of Economics Library (2019) states that the 2018 standard "отменен элемент «Общее обозначение материала»" (cancelled the general material designation element, our translation) and added a ninth area, content type and means of access, at the end: "Текст : непосредственный" for print, "Текст : электронный" for a source read online. Samara's library adds that the area is not compulsory in a reference list.
How many authors are listed?
All of them, or a shortened set: one to four authors, and with five or more the first three and "[и др.]" (and others) (Federal Agency on Technical Regulation and Metrology, 2018). Magnitogorsk's library calls this the end of the old "правило трёх" (rule of three, our translation). Under GOST R 7.0.5-2008, a work by one to three authors starts with their names; the examples for four or more start with the title.
The elements, with a checked example
The article below was checked at its journal on 26 September 2026.
| Element | Prescribed mark | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Heading: first author | none | Московская, А. А. |
| Title proper | none | Между социальным и экономическим благом: … |
| Statement of responsibility | / | / А. А. Московская, А. А. Берендяев, А. Ю. Москвина |
| Identifier | . – | . – DOI 10.14515/monitoring.2017.6.02 |
| Content type : means of access | . – | . – Текст : электронный |
| The journal | // | // Мониторинг общественного мнения: экономические и социальные перемены |
| Year, issue, pages | . – each | . – 2017. – № 6. – С. 31–51. |
| Checking the finished entry | none | Verify references, free |
Put together, the entry reads:
Московская, А. А. Между социальным и экономическим благом: конфликт проектов легитимации социального предпринимательства в России / А. А. Московская, А. А. Берендяев, А. Ю. Москвина. – DOI 10.14515/monitoring.2017.6.02. – Текст : электронный // Мониторинг общественного мнения: экономические и социальные перемены. – 2017. – № 6. – С. 31–51.
Novosibirsk's library gives this same article as an example with pages 31 to 35 (Novosibirsk State Technical University Library, n.d.-a); the article says 31 to 51 (Moskovskaya et al., 2017). Copy from the source, not from an example. Libraries also differ on the heading: Mendeleev and Magnitogorsk put a comma after the surname, Novosibirsk does not.
How do in-text and footnote references work in GOST R 7.0.5-2008?
GOST R 7.0.5-2008 names three kinds: in-text references in round brackets, footnotes, and end references gathered after the text (Federal Agency on Technical Regulation and Metrology, 2008). Use one system throughout.
- End references with a number: the text carries the number in square brackets, [59], or the number and page, [10, с. 81].
- Unnumbered end references: the bracket names the author and, if needed, the year and page, as in the standard's [Бахтин, 2003, с. 18]. With four or more authors, or none, the title goes in instead.
- Footnotes: the first in full, then shortened. A repeat of the one just cited becomes "Там же" (ibid.); a later repeat gives the author and "Указ. соч." (work cited). The standard allows the Latin forms for works in Latin script; see our guide to ibid., op. cit. and loc. cit..
GOST R 7.0.5-2008 also lets a reference replace the ". –" between areas with a full stop. That is why journals print lines such as "Гордеева Т.О., Осин Е.Н. Особенности мотивации достижения … // Психологические исследования. 2012. Т. 5, № 24. С. 4.", which is the form the journal gives under the heading "ГОСТ 2008" (Gordeeva and Osin, 2012).
What do Russian university libraries teach?
The same two standards, with different choices where they leave room.
- Magnitogorsk State Technical University (2019) tells students the 2018 standard left prescribed punctuation alone: "Пунктуация осталась без изменений" (the punctuation stayed unchanged, our translation).
- Samara State University of Economics (2019) says the new ninth area may be left out of a list.
- Novosibirsk State Technical University (n.d.-a) ends every example with "Текст : непосредственный" or "Текст : электронный", before the "//" in an article.
- The Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology (n.d.) "рекомендует авторам использовать краткую форму описания" (recommends that authors use the short description, our translation); its book and article examples omit the content-type area, and it calls order of first citation the most common.
- Yelets State University (n.d.) teaches the alphabetical list, "с разделением на кириллический и латинский алфавиты" (divided into Cyrillic and Latin alphabets, our translation), with official documents first.
They disagree on the list's order and on "Текст : непосредственный". The standards allow both, so your department's guide decides; our guide to dissertation formatting and university templates covers the rest.
How do I transliterate a Russian reference list for an English-language journal?
Use the system the journal names, and spell each author's name as their publications do. Many Russian journals print a Latin-script list after the Cyrillic one, and they disagree on the system.
- Library of Congress (LC): Saint Petersburg University's Вестник СПбГУ. Язык и литература: "Транслитерация должна быть оформлена в системе Library Congress (LC)" (Saint Petersburg University, n.d.).
- BGN: the Russian Journal of Education and Psychology (n.d.) asks for BGN, and for every author rather than three.
- BSI: the law journal Российское право: образование, практика, наука (Ural State Law University, n.d.) and the TUSUR journal (Tomsk State University of Control Systems and Radioelectronics, n.d.) name BSI. TUSUR adds that GOST R 7.0.5-2008 does not apply to Latin-script references, as international standards do not support its "//" and dash.
- GOST 7.79-2000, System B: the Russian standard's system of letter combinations. None of the journals we read required it; Novosibirsk's library links it but tells authors to choose BGN (Novosibirsk State Technical University Library, n.d.-b).
We could not read the Library of Congress table: its site returned a check for robots. The two we read differ here:
| Cyrillic | BGN/PCGN 1947 | GOST 7.79-2000, System B |
|---|---|---|
| й | y | j |
| х | kh | x |
| ц | ts | cz, or c before i, e, y, j |
| щ | shch | shh |
| ы | y | y' |
| э | e | e' |
| е after a vowel | ye | e |
The BGN/PCGN table (Permanent Committee on Geographical Names, 2022) turns Гордеева into Gordeyeva, but the English version of the article in our examples prints Gordeeva, so write Gordeeva.
How do I build and check a GOST reference list?
Take every element from the source, set it in the standard's order, and check the list.
- Find out which standards your department names, and which order it wants for the list.
- Search with EdCitation's Find sources, which searches about 300 million published works and takes Russian queries.
- Open each source's first page. Many Russian journals print a reference line; check it against the article.
- Write the entry area by area: heading, title, "/" and authors, edition, place : publisher, year, extent, identifier, content type, and "//" for a part of a larger work.
- Cite in square brackets with the page, [3, с. 12], or in footnotes.
- For an English-language source, take the details from Cite a source and rearrange them into GOST order.
- Paste the list into Verify references, then check by hand any Cyrillic entry it marks.
What can EdCitation do for a GOST reference list?
Check it and help fill it, not build it yet. EdCitation never writes any part of a student's paper; every reference it gives is looked up, never written.
Cite a source builds six other styles
Cite a source builds APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver only, free. For the DOI 10.54359/ps.v5i24.759, the APA entry came back as:
Гордеева, Т., & Осин, Е. (2012). Особенности мотивации достижения и учебной мотивации студентов, демонстрирующих разные типы академических достижений (ЕГЭ, победы в олимпиадах, академическая успеваемость). Психологические исследования, 5(24). https://doi.org/10.54359/ps.v5i24.759
And the Vancouver entry as:
Гордеева Т, Осин Е. Особенности мотивации достижения и учебной мотивации студентов, демонстрирующих разные типы академических достижений (ЕГЭ, победы в олимпиадах, академическая успеваемость). Психологические исследования. 2012 Aug 15;5(24). doi: 10.54359/ps.v5i24.759.
Fix these by hand. Both give one initial per author, because the Crossref record holds first names only; the article gives Т. О. and Е. Н. The article number, 4, is missing. APA asks for a non-Roman title to be transliterated where practical, with an English translation in square brackets (Adams, 2021), and the NLM's Vancouver guide translates the title, and its examples romanise the names (Patrias, 2007); neither entry did. The Cyrillic itself came through whole, in every style and in the BibTeX export.
Verify references on Cyrillic entries
Verify references is the free tool for the records behind a list, because it looks each entry up rather than guessing. We pasted five entries in full GOST form. Gordeeva and Osin, with its DOI, came back verified: "The DOI resolves to this record and the title matches." So did Poropat's 2009 meta-analysis, and Vasil'ev's book with its ISBN: "The ISBN leads to this book in a library catalogue, and its title matches." Without its DOI, in the short GOST form, the Gordeeva and Osin article was found and verified by its title, year and first author.
The Moskovskaya article came back "could not check": its Crossref record holds only the English title, "in another script or language from your entry, so the titles could not be compared". The same answer came for Gordeeva and Osin written with the title translated into English, against a record in Russian. Neither is an error in the entry; open the DOI and compare the titles yourself, as our guide to checking a reference is real sets out.
Find sources in Russian
EdCitation's Find sources returned 23,233 works for "мотивация достижения студентов" (students' achievement motivation), the first ten all with Russian titles. One record held its authors inside the title; another listed a university as an author. All three tools are free; Pricing shows what Pro adds at $8 a month.
Quick questions
Is GOST 7.1-2003 still valid?
Not in Russia, where Rosstandart marks it as no longer in force. Two Russian university libraries say it remains in force in other CIS countries.
Do I still write [Электронный ресурс] after the title?
Not under GOST R 7.0.100-2018. A source read online may end with "Текст : электронный" instead, if your university asks for it.
How are in-text references written in GOST?
As the list number in square brackets, with the page after a comma: [10, с. 81]. GOST R 7.0.5-2008 also allows footnotes and author-year brackets.
Can EdCitation build a GOST reference?
Not yet. EdCitation's Cite a source builds APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago 18 author-date, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver; Verify references checks a GOST list, with the Cyrillic faults above.
References
- Adams, A. (2021, August 23). When and how to transliterate titles in references. APA Style. https://apastyle.apa.org/blog/transliterated-titles-references
- Federal Agency on Technical Regulation and Metrology. (2008). ГОСТ Р 7.0.5–2008. Библиографическая ссылка. Общие требования и правила составления [Bibliographic reference: General requirements and rules]. Wikisource. https://ru.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%93%D0%9E%D0%A1%D0%A2_%D0%A0_7.0.5%E2%80%942008
- Federal Agency on Technical Regulation and Metrology. (2018). ГОСТ Р 7.0.100–2018. Библиографическая запись. Библиографическое описание. Общие требования и правила составления [Bibliographic record. Bibliographic description: General requirements and rules] [PDF]. Standartinform. https://guap.ru/standards/db/docs/gost_r_7.0.100-2018.pdf
- Gordeeva, T. O., & Osin, E. N. (2012). Особенности мотивации достижения и учебной мотивации студентов, демонстрирующих разные типы академических достижений (ЕГЭ, победы в олимпиадах, академическая успеваемость) [Differences in achievement motivation and learning motivation in students exhibiting different types of academic attainment]. Психологические исследования, 5(24), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.54359/ps.v5i24.759
- Magnitogorsk State Technical University Library. (2019). ГОСТ Р 7.0.100–2018: новые правила описания статей и книг [GOST R 7.0.100-2018: New rules for describing articles and books] [PDF]. https://lib.magtu.ru/doc/Primery-GOST-7.0.100-2018.pdf
- Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology. (n.d.). Правила оформления библиографического списка литературы [Rules for setting out a reference list]. Information and Library Centre. https://lib.muctr.ru/pravila-oformleniya-bibliograficheskogo-spiska-literatury
- Moskovskaya, A. A., Berendyaev, A. A., & Moskvina, A. Yu. (2017). Между социальным и экономическим благом: конфликт проектов легитимации социального предпринимательства в России [Between social and economic good: Conflicting projects of legitimation of social entrepreneurship in Russia]. Мониторинг общественного мнения: экономические и социальные перемены, (6), 31–51. https://doi.org/10.14515/monitoring.2017.6.02
- Novosibirsk State Technical University Library. (n.d.-a). Консультации по оформлению списка литературы к курсовым и дипломным работам [Advice on reference lists for coursework and final projects]. https://library.nstu.ru/student/advice-on-making-a-list-of-references-for-course-and-diploma-projects/
- Novosibirsk State Technical University Library. (n.d.-b). Транслитерация [Transliteration]. https://library.nstu.ru/teacher/in-aid-of-scientific-work/rekomendatsii-pri-podgotovke-publikatsiy/transliteratsiya/
- Patrias, K. (2007). Citing medicine: The NLM style guide for authors, editors, and publishers (2nd ed., D. L. Wendling, Technical Ed.). National Library of Medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK7282/
- Permanent Committee on Geographical Names. (2022). Romanization of Russian: BGN/PCGN 1947 system [PDF]. GOV.UK. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/636cd2828fa8f5357a0c652c/ROMANIZATION_OF_RUSSIAN_2022_final.pdf
- Rosstandart. (n.d.-a). ГОСТ 7.1-2003 [Catalogue entry]. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://protect.gost.ru/gost/details/93ee67f8-81ae-4e85-b57c-0f3952317ea1
- Rosstandart. (n.d.-b). ГОСТ 7.79-2000 [Catalogue entry]. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://protect.gost.ru/gost/details/b8b907b5-25ea-4fca-8e05-1eb35d0b75ef
- Rosstandart. (n.d.-c). ГОСТ Р 7.0.5-2008 [Catalogue entry]. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://protect.gost.ru/gost/details/2eef7820-44bc-49a4-bf1f-fe51c54039dc
- Rosstandart. (n.d.-d). ГОСТ Р 7.0.100-2018 [Catalogue entry]. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://protect.gost.ru/gost/details/389dfd5a-535a-458a-81c3-14b729b1cee1
- Rosstandart. (n.d.-e). ГОСТ Р 7.0.108-2022 [Catalogue entry]. Retrieved September 26, 2026, from https://protect.gost.ru/gost/details/df775619-cc9b-4cea-af6e-83e31a0aab9e
- Russian Journal of Education and Psychology. (n.d.). Инструкция по оформлению References [Instructions for the References list] [PDF]. https://rjep.ru/submissions/doc/literature_eng.pdf
- Saint Petersburg University. (n.d.). Отправка материалов [Submissions]. Вестник Санкт-Петербургского университета. Язык и литература. https://languagejournal.spbu.ru/about/submissions
- Samara State University of Economics Library. (2019). Пояснение к национальному стандарту ГОСТ Р 7.0.100–2018 [Notes on the national standard GOST R 7.0.100-2018] [PDF]. https://lib.sseu.ru/sites/default/files/2019/12/poyasneniya_k_gostu_2018_na_sayt.pdf
- Tomsk State University of Control Systems and Radioelectronics. (n.d.). References in the Roman alphabet: Guidelines. Proceedings of TUSUR University. https://journal.tusur.ru/en/information-for-authors/references-in-the-roman-alphabet-guidelines
- Ural State Law University. (n.d.). Правила оформления списка литературы и references [Rules for the reference list and References]. Российское право: образование, практика, наука. https://rospravojournal.usla.ru/index.php/rp/about/references
- Yelets State University. (n.d.). Правила оформления списка литературы [Rules for reference lists]. Scientific Library. https://lib.elsu.ru/pravila-oformleniya.html