Citation Formats

Authors

Copyright

This specification is (C) 2004-2024 by the authors. However, the authors intend to submit (or already have submitted, see details in the spec) this specification to a standards body with a liberal copyright/licensing policy such as the GMPG, IETF, and/or W3C. Anyone wishing to contribute should read their copyright principles, policies and licenses (e.g. the GMPG Principles) and agree to them, including licensing of all contributions under all required licenses (e.g. CC-by 1.0 and later), before contributing.

Introduction

Currently, there has been some discussion about a citation format. This is the wiki page to document current examples of cites/citations on the web today, and current cite/citation formats, and their implicit/explicit schemas, with the intent of deriving a cite microformat from that research.

Semantic XHTML Design Principles

Note: the Semantic XHTML Design Principles were written primarily within the context of developing hCard and hCalendar, thus it may be easier to understand these principles in the context of the hCard design methodology (i.e. read that first). Tantek

XHTML is built on XML, and thus XHTML based formats can be used not only for convenient display presentation, but also for general purpose data exchange. In many ways, XHTML based formats exemplify the best of both HTML and XML worlds. However, when building XHTML based formats, it helps to have a guiding set of principles.

Reuse the schema (names, objects, properties, values, types, hierarchies, constraints) as much as possible from pre-existing, established, well-supported standards by reference. Avoid restating constraints expressed in the source standard. Informative mentions are ok.
1. For types with multiple components, use nested elements with class names equivalent to the names of the components.
2. Plural components are made singular, and thus multiple nested elements are used to represent multiple text values that are comma-delimited.
Use the most accurately precise semantic XHTML building block for each object etc.
Otherwise use a generic structural element (e.g. <span> or <div>), or the appropriate contextual element (e.g. an <li> inside a <ul> or <ol>).
Use class names based on names from the original schema, unless the semantic XHTML building block precisely represents that part of the original schema. If names in the source schema are case-insensitive, then use an all lowercase equivalent. Components names implicit in prose (rather than explicit in the defined schema) should also use lowercase equivalents for ease of use. Spaces in component names become dash '-' characters.
Finally, if the format of the data according to the original schema is too long and/or not human-friendly, use <abbr> instead of a generic structural element, and place the literal data into the 'title' attribute (where abbr expansions go), and the more brief and human readable equivalent into the element itself. Further informative explanation of this use of <abbr>: Human vs. ISO8601 dates problem solved

Example Formats

BibTeX

Fields Used by Bibtex

abstract:	An abstract of the work.
address:	Publisher's address. For major publishing houses, just the city is given. For small publishers, you can help the reader by giving the complete address.
affiliation:	The author's affiliation.
annote:	An annotation. It is not used by he standard bibliography styles, but may be used by others that produce an annotated bibliography.
author:	The name(s) of the author(s).
booktitle:	Title of a book, part of which is being cited. For book entries, use the title field instead.
chapter:	A chapter (or section) number.
contents:	A Table of Contents.
copyright:	Copyright information.
crossref:	The database key of the entry being cross-referenced.
edition:	The edition of a book - for example "Second". Notice that it is in capitals.
editor:	Name(s) of editor(s). If there is also an author field, then the editor field gives the editor of the book or collection in which the reference appears.
howpublished:	How something strange has been published. The first word should be capitalized.
institution:	The sponsoring institution of a technical report.
ISBN:	The International Standard Book Number.
ISSN:	The International Standard Serial Number. Used to identify a journal.
journal:	A journal name. Abbreviations are provided for many journals.
key:	Used for alphabetizing and creating a label when the author and editor fields are missing. This field should not be confused with the key that appears at the beginning of the reference.
keywords:	Key words used for searching or possibly for annotation.
language:	The language the document is written in.
LCCN:	The Library of Congress Call Number.
location:	A location associated with the entry, such as the city in which a conference took place.
month:	The month in which the work was published or, for an unpublished work, in which it was written.
mrnumber:	The Mathematical Reviews number.
note:	Any additional information that can help the reader. First word should be capitalized.
number:	The number of a journal, magazine, technical report, or of a work in a series. An issue of a journal or magazine is usually identified by its volume and number; the organization that issues a technical report usually gives it a number; and sometimes books are given numbers in a named series.
organization:	The organization that sponsors a conference or publishes a manual.
pages:	One or more page numbers or ranges of number, such as 37--42, or 7,53,82--94.
price:	The price of the material.
publisher:	The publisher's name.
school:	The name of the school where a thesis was written.
series:	Then name given a series or set of books. When citing an entire book, the title field gives its title and the optional series field gives the name of a series in which the book was published.
size:	The physical dimensions of the work.
title:	The work's title.
type:	The type of technical report - for example, "Research Note".
url:	The WWW Universal Resource Locator that points to the item being referenced. Often used for technical reports to point to the FTP site where it resides.
volume:	The volume of a journal or multivolume book.
year:	The year of publication or, for an unpublished work, the year it was written. It should only consist of numerals, such as 1976.

BibTeX citation Types

A reference can be to any of a variety of types. Following is a list of types. Each one also explains the fields associated with that type. Any fields not listed as required or optional are considered to be ignored.

article:	An article from a journal or magazine. Required fields: author, title, journal, year. Optional fields: volume, number, pages, month, note, key.
book:	A book with an explicit publisher. Required fields: author or editor, title, publisher, year. Optional fields: volume, series, address, edition, month, note, key.
booklet:	A work that is printed and bound, but without a named publisher or sponsoring institution. Required fields: title. Optional fields: author, howpublished, address, month, year, note, key.
collection:	A collection of works. Same as <a href="#proceedings">Proceedings</a>.
conference:	The same as <a href="#inproceedings">Inproceedings</a>.
inbook:	A part of a book, which may be a chapter and/or a range of pages. Required fields: author or editor, title, chapter and/or pages, publisher, year. Optional fields: volumer, series, address, edition, month, note, key.
incollection:	A part of a book with its own title. Required fields: author, title, booktitle, publisher, year. Optional fields: editor, pages, organization, publisher, address, month, note, key.
<a name="inproceedings"></a>inproceedings:	An article in a conference proceedings. Required fields: author, title, booktitle, year. Optional fields: editor, pages, organization, publisher, address, month, note, key.
manual:	Technical documentation. Required fields: title. Optional fields: author, organization, address, edition, month, year, note.
mastersthesis:	A Master's thesis. Required fields: author, title, school, year. Optional fields: address, month, note, key.
misc:	Use this type when nothing else fits. Required fields: none. Optional fields: author, title, howpublished, month, year, note, key.
patent:	A patent.
phdthesis:	A Ph.D. thesis. Required fields: author, title, school, year. Optional fields: address, month, note, key.
<a name="proceedings"></a>proceedings:	The proceedings of a conference. Required fields: title, year. Optional fields: editor, publisher, organization, address, month, note, key.
techreport:	A report published by a school or other institution, usually numbered within a series. Required fields: author, title, institution, year. Optional fields: type, number, address, month, note, key.
unpublished:	A document with an author and title, but not formally published. Required fields: author, title, note. Optional fields: month, year, key.

Examples

@book{kn:gnus,

AUTHOR = "Donald E. Knudson",
TITLE = "1966 World Gnus Almanac",
PUBLISHER = {Permafrost Press},
ADDRESS = {Novosibirsk} }

<div class="book" id="kn:gnus">
  <div class="author">Donald E. Knudson</div>
  <div class="title">1966 World Gnus Almanac</div>
  <div class="publisher">Permafrost Press</div>
  <div class="address">Novosibirsk</div>
</div>


@article{XAi_HSCheng_1994a,

author = "X. Ai and H. S. Cheng",
title = "Influence of moving dent on point {EHL} contacts",
journal = "Tribol. Trans.",
volume = "37",
year = "1994",
pages = "323--335",
}

<div class="article" id="XAi_HSCheng_1994a">
  <div class="author">X. Ai and H. S. Cheng</div>
  <div class="title">Influence of moving dent on point {EHL} contacts</div>
  <div class="journal">Tribol. Trans.</div>
  <div class="volume">37</div>
  <div class="year">1994</div>
  <div class="pages">323--335</div>
</div>

Todo

select a bibliography format to model
look for HTML tags that give the most semantic meaning

Questions

what is the difference between hReview and a Citation format?
- Right a citation is actually very different from a review, and even although a review could be said to contain a citation to the item being reviewed, in practice, the two are very different.
if a citation is an author or publisher, isn't that just an hCard

Modularity

My hope for this microformat is that it can be a sort of module that can be used in other microformats. Once this is developed and flushed out, citation references could easily be used for publications on a Resume/CV, therefore the citation microformat would be a module (subset) of all the possible Resume Values.

Other Microformats that use the Citation Module

Resume Microformat (possibly)

Other Microformats that the Citation Module will use

hCard encodings for things like Author, Publisher (people and companies)

References

Informative References

COinS
BibTeX referencesI think a citation micro-format would be useful, but BibTeX is not the best model to use. It has a flat metadata model that does a really poor job representing the sort of citations that people outside of the hard sciences cite.

Comments

I'm the author of the citeproc project, which includes a micro-format of sorts (though I never thought of it as such) in its XHTML output mode. See here for an example. The difference compared to the bibtex-derived model is that is is a) more generic and b) hierachical.

It would be possible, certainly, to do a flat model if for some reason there was a good technical reason not to go hierarchical (though is there?), but then you need to think outside the BibTeX box in any case. Any model of this sort ought to be able to handle legal citations, magazine articles, patents, etc. etc.; not just a narrow range of BibTeX types.

citation