While links (see Hyperlinks) are often sufficient to refer to external or internal information from Org, they have their limitations when referring to multiple targets or typesetting printed publications.
Org mode provides a more sophisticated markup to “cite” external resources. For example, consider the following Org mode snippet
#+bibliography: citationdata.bib Org mode is used by various communities [cite:teaching: @orgteaching; and TeX: @orgtex]. [cite/author/caps:@orgtex] uses Org mode to simplify writing scientific publications, while [cite/author/caps:@orgteaching] experiment with Org babel to improve teaching. #+print_bibliography:
Org mode will gather citation metadata from the ‘#+bibliography’ database and use it to typeset the exported document in arbitrary formats. For example, the snippet below shows ASCII export output.
Org mode is used by various communities (teaching: Birkenkrahe, Marcus, 2023, and TeX: Somma, Emmanuele F, 2023). Somma, Emmanuele F uses Org mode to simplify writing scientific publications, while Birkenkrahe, Marcus experiment with Org babel to improve teaching. Birkenkrahe, Marcus (2023). /Teaching Data Science with Literate Programming Tools/, MDPI. Somma, Emmanuele F (2023). /Simplifying LaTeX with ORG-mode in Emacs/, TUGboat volume.
In addition to export, users can use completion to search and insert
citations from the bibliography (via org-cite-insert). Citations
also act like ordinary links, jumping to the citation metadata when
“following” them using org-open-at-point.
You can customize every aspect (capability) of citation handling using built-in or external citation processors.
Org mode ships with several built-in citation processors tailored to work with LaTeX export and BibTeX bibliographies (‘bibtex’, ‘biblatex’, and ‘natbib’ processors), or with more generic formats described using Citation Style Language (‘csl’ processor). The default citation processor is ‘basic’ - it works with arbitrary export formats and recognizes both BibTeX and CSL bibliographies. More citation processors are distributed as Emacs packages.
Multiple citation processors can be mixed to meet your preferences.
Configure org-cite-activate-processor, org-cite-follow-processor,
org-cite-insert-processor, and org-cite-export-processors to
select which processor to use for every citation capability:
Fontification, tooltip preview, etc.
At-point actions on citations via org-open-at-point.
Add and edit citations via org-cite-insert.
Via different libraries for different target formats.