User:J. Johnson/Citation tools

This is my working area (in active ferment) for organizing information about tools that can be used to create filled in {{citation}} (or {{cite xxx}} family) templates. My purpose is to determine what tools are useful, and to promote such tools as are useful.

My principles ("prejudices") are very simple: 1) Citations are best handled in a template (argument elsewhere), and 2) bibliographic details (templated or not) should not be in the body of the article (whether in <ref> tags or not), but collected in a separate references section. This latter principle implies the use of {{Harv}} templates within the article. Also, 3) citations should generally include full bibliographic details to aid in identifying the source (and distinguishing it from similar sources) and locating it (possibly in alternate locations or formats). I also prefer {{citation}}, but am tolerant of {{cite xxx}}.

List

Main references found on Wikipedia:

Citation tools -- redirects to WP:Citing sources#Citation_templates_and_tools (aka WP;CITE).
WP:Citation tools

WP:Citing sources#Citation_templates_and_tools#Programming_tools mentions:

Wikicite (written in Visual Basic .NET) and
Wikicite+.
The {{pmid XXXX}} or {{isbn XXXX}} templates from User:Richiez (requires working Ruby installation). Not to be confused with {{pmid}} (aka {{Cite pmid}}) and {{isbn}} (for missing isbns).
pubmed2wiki.xsl an XSL stylesheet transforming the XML output of PubMed to Wikipedia refs.
RefTag by Apoc2400 creates a prefilled {{cite book}} template with various options from a Google Books URL.
wikiciter web interface.

WP:Citation tools has various intriguing links , including:

Ref++,
{{Cite doi}}, {{Cite pmid}}, {{Cite jstor}}, and {{Cite arXiv}},

and others. I haven't check these (yet), wouldn't mind some help here.

Cite doi

Inserting {{cite doi|10.1126/science.258.5088.1621}} causes a proper citation to be displayed (along with the hyper-linked doi and pmid), but nothing is added to the text; it appears to be done on-the-fly. (Is that really a good thing?) Clicking on the edit link displays the filled in {{cite journal}} template (stored in WT namespace). {{Cite pmid}} seems to work the same way; likewise for the others?

Bibtex

In regards of journals, another possibility to consider is the use of one of the standard citation manager formats. E.g., Bibtex citaitons look like (in part):

author = {Jacoby, Gordon C. and Williams, Patrick L. and Buckley, Brendan M.}, 
title = {Tree Ring Correlation Between Prehistoric Landslides ...}, 
volume = {258}, 
number = {5088}, 
pages = {1621-1623}, 
year = {1992}, 
doi = {10.1126/science.258.5088.1621}, 
URL = {http://www.sciencemag.org/content/258/5088/1621.abstract}, 
eprint = {http://www.sciencemag.org/content/258/5088/1621.full.pdf}, 
journal = {Science}

In any competent editor (program) it is a simple matter to remove the curly braces and terminal commas, insert the vertical bars, and replace "URL" with "url", and you have most of a filled in template. The only "typing" is parsing the "author" line into individual "lastn, firstn" lines.

ISBN

Clicking on an ISBN (in Wikipedia) takes you to a customized "Book sources" page. Scroll down to the "Bibliographical information" section, and one of the links there will return a Wikipedia style {{cite book}} template, mostly filled out. Scroll back up to the "Online databases" section and click on the first "Find this book" link to get the rest of the information.

Sandbox (testing area)

Jacoby, G. C.; Williams, P. L.; Buckley, B. M. (1992). "Tree Ring Correlation Between Prehistoric Landslides and Abrupt Tectonic Events in Seattle, Washington". Science. 258 (5088): 1621–1623. doi:10.1126/science.258.5088.1621. PMID 17742529.

Citation is displayed, but actual template stored in WT space.