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Note:
When you edit this page, you agree to release your contribution under the
CC0
. See
Public Domain Help Pages
for more info.
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Overview
This page is
a guide to adding footnotes (also called "citations", "inline citations" or "references")
when both the
VisualEditor's citation tool
and the
citoid service
has been configured for your wiki.
The citoid service automatically creates a footnote when you give it a URL, DOI, ISBN, PMID, PMCID, QID, title, citation.
It has a companion extension,
Citoid
, which uses
VisualEditor's citation tool
and citation templates.
The toolbar
The VisualEditor toolbar appears at the top of the screen when you begin editing.
It includes the icons that will be needed in order to add citations to the page.
Prerequisites
Both the VisualEditor's citation tool and citoid should be enabled in your wiki. If neither citation tool nor the citoid service is configured, then a "Cite" dropdown menu will be available in the toolbar. If this is what you see, you are on the wrong help page. See the
main user guide
instead, which has instructions on using references in this system.
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If either the citation tool or the citoid service are enabled, then the citation tool's "Cite" dropdown menu will be replaced by the the "Cite" button. This is what you should see.
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Click on the "Cite" button. If the Automatic tab is disabled, you are accessing the wrong help page. Instead see
Help:VisualEditor/User_guide/Citation templates
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Add a new reference
Click on the "Cite" button in the toolbar. This will open a dialog box with three tabs: Automatic, Manual, and Re-use.
(If the Automatic tab is disabled, this means citoid is not enabled. If the Manual tab is disabled, this means the citation tool is not enabled. Instructions on how to enable the citation tool are available at
VisualEditor/Citation tool
. Instructions on how to configure citoid are available at
Citoid/Enabling Citoid on your wiki
.)
Automatic
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In the automatic field you can enter information about the book or other source you want to cite, and a citation template will be automatically generated. You can input a URL (website address), a unique identifier like an ISBN for books, DOI (Digital Object Identifier), PubMed ID, PMCID (including the PMC prefix), or QID (from Wikidata).
You can also type in a citation or the title of the work. You should be as specific as possible, as the citoid service's search feature returns only the first result from both WorldCat (which mostly contains books) and Crossref (which mostly contains academic papers), in a random order.
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Manual
There are two ways to add footnotes from the Manual tab: using a standard citation template, or using the "Basic" form.
Using standard cite templates
Using the "Basic" citation
Re-use an existing reference
If the page already contains a citation that applies to the text you want to source, then you can choose to re-use the existing citation.
To re-use an existing reference, place your cursor in the body of the text where you want to add a new reference (number) for that citation. Then click on the "Cite" button in the toolbar, and click on the "Re-use" tab from "Add a citation" dialog.
In the "Re-use" tab, look at the list for the reference you want to reuse, and select it. If there are many references, you can use the search box (labeled "Search within current citations") to list only those references that include certain text.
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Edit an existing reference
To edit an existing reference, click on it where it appears in the text (usually as a bracketed number). You will see either an icon (and name) for the template that was used to create this reference, or a "Basic" icon (bookmark). If you see the icon for the template, clicking on edit button will will take you directly to the template editor dialog.
Note:
It is not possible to select and edit a footnote by clicking on it in the References list. Clicking on the References list will highlight the whole list and open the References list editor.
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If, instead of the template icon, you see the "Basic" icon (bookmark), clicking on the edit button will open a dialog where you can edit the reference. Clicking on this icon will open a dialog where you can edit the reference.
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If you open a "Basic" reference and it only contains a link, you may see any option to Convert the reference. This will attempt to use the Automatic feature to replace the simple reference with a fully formatted reference.
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If what appears is the "Basic" icon, clicking on the Edit button opens the Reference dialog, where you can edit the reference's contents.
Many wikis use templates to format references. If a template is used in your reference, then all the text in the template will be highlighted when you click on the reference information.
If a template was used and you've clicked on information in that template, then the "Template" icon (puzzle piece) will appear. Click on that icon to edit the content of the template in the template editor dialog. See the
Using standard cite templates
for further information about editing templates.
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Click on "Apply changes" when you're done.
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Position the list of references
If there isn't already a list of references on the page (for example, if you're adding the first reference for the page), you need to specify where the list of references, and their text, will be displayed to the reader.
Place the cursor where you want to display the references list (usually at the bottom of the page), open the "Insert" menu and click the "References list" icon (three books).
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If you are using several groups of references, which is relatively rare, you can specify the group in this dialog. Only the references that belong to that group will be displayed here.
The final step in the References list dialog is to click "Insert".
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You can add citation templates directly into the article, without putting them in footnotes (this can be helpful if you want to create, say, a "Further Reading" list). The citoid service will not automatically fill in these citation templates.
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Place your cursor where you want the citation template to appear (if you are creating a "Further Reading" list, this may be after a bullet point), then from the "Insert" menu, click on the "Template" icon (a puzzle piece).
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Then, type the name (or part of the name) of the citation template you want to use, select it, click on "Add template", and edit it as you would any other template.
After you're done editing the template, click on "Insert" to return to the Reference editor, and "Insert" again to return to the page you're editing (if you are creating a "Further Reading" list, you will have to repeat the steps above at every bullet point of the list).
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See also