15.1 Citations ¶

Before adding citations, first set one-or-more bibliographies, either globally with org-cite-global-bibliography, or locally using one or more “bibliography” keywords.

#+bibliography: SomeFile.bib
#+bibliography: /some/other/file.json
#+bibliography: "/some/file/with spaces/in its name.bib"

Org mode uses all the local and global bibliographies combined to search for citation keys.

One can then insert and edit citations using org-cite-insert, called with C-c C-x @.

A citation requires one or more citation key(s), elements identifying a reference in the bibliography.

• Each citation is surrounded by brackets and uses the ‘cite’ type.
• Each key starts with the character ‘@’.

  [cite:@key]
  

• Each key can be qualified by a prefix (e.g. “see ”) and/or a suffix (e.g. “p. 123”), giving information useful or necessary for the comprehension of the citation but not included in the reference.

  [cite:see @key p. 123]
  

• A single citation can cite more than one reference ; the keys are separated by semicolons ; the formatting of such citation groups is specified by the style.

  [cite:@key1;@key2;@key3]
  

• One can also specify a stylistic variation for the citations by inserting a ‘/’ and a style name between the ‘cite’ keyword and the colon; this usually makes sense only for the author-year styles.

  [cite/style:common prefix ;prefix @key suffix; ... ; common suffix]
  

  When ‘style’ is not specified, one of the two default styles are used

  • either the default style specified in the ‘CITE_EXPORT’ keyword (see Citation export processors)

    #+cite_export: basic numeric noauthor/bare
    [cite:@key] is the same as [cite/noauthor/bare:@key]
    

  • or, if ‘CITE_EXPORT’ is not set, using the default ‘nil’ style

    [cite:@key] is the same as [cite/nil:@key]
    

The only mandatory elements are:

• The ‘cite’ keyword and the colon.
• The ‘@’ character immediately preceding each key.
• The brackets surrounding the citation(s) (group).