The following tools can help you assemble a citation from limited information, with limited effort. These are tools with a variety of interfaces that provide a complete formatted reference based on a few initial details.
Tools
- Citoid: A tool built into Visual Editor that attempts to build a full citation based on a URL. See user guide.
- Yadkard: Converts a DOI, ISBN, or Google Books URL into a citation and shortened footnote. URLs are limited to a few news websites including New York Times, BBC, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, The Daily Telegraph and The Huffington Post.
- reFill: Uses Citoid to replace all bare URLs on a Wikipedia page with filled {{cite web}} templates.
- Reflinks: A tool that replaces all bare URLs on a Wikipedia page with {{cite web}} templates, grabbing the title from the HTML header.
- DOI Wikipedia reference generator: Converts a digital object identifier (DOI) into {{cite journal}}.
- Wikipedia citation tool for Google Books: Converts a Google Books URL into {{cite book}}. Wikipedia has hundreds of bare URL citations that could be completed using this tool.
- User:Badgettrg, Biomedical citation maker. Converts a Pubmed ID (PMID), DOI, PMCID , NCT to {{cite journal}}, {{cite pmid}}, or simple wikiformatting for all journals indexed by PubMed. Bookmarklet is available. Adds links to ACP Journal Club and Evidence-Based Medicine comments if present.
- Diberri Template builder: Converts URL, DrugBank ID, HGNC ID, PubMed ID, PubMed Central ID or PubChem ID to full citation.
- DTU Informatics PMID to Cite journal: Converts a PubMed ID (PMID) into a {{cite journal}}.
- Wikipedia-References-Creator: A Firefox addon for creation of references (output changeable).
RefScript: A bookmarklet that generates references with a single click. Works with a few news websites (BBC, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Daily Telegraph, Huffington Post, Huffington Post Canada, New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Times of India, Financial Times, The Economist, Business Week, Ars Technica, TG Daily) and it can learn any other newspaper or website.- WebRef: A bookmarklet automating the filling of the {{cite web}} template.
- MakeRef: A form for creating various {{cite}} templates.
Not working
- New York Times Wikipedia reference generator: Converts a NYT URL into a {{cite news}}. --not working as of March 28, 2015. --Siddhant (talk) 02:32, 28 March 2015 (UTC) Still not working November 2015. Pol098 (talk) 18:58, 8 November 2015 (UTC) • Still nothing September 2016 --Alekol (talk) 20:33, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
Templates
- BibDesk Export Template â€" An export template for formatting Wikipedia citation templates in BibDesk, which is a free open-source BibTeX-based reference management software application for OS X
- Chrome citation extension for Google Chrome â€" Creates a citation that screen-scrapes the most commonly referenced websites
- Citation Bot (more info) â€" Partial citations must either contain a DOI, PMID, PMC, ISBN, or enough fields to be uniquely found; the bot will also fix formatting errors
- CiteCompletion for AutoWikiBrowser â€" A custom module for AWB to complete citations of common English-language news sites
- Cite4Wiki for Mozilla Firefox 3.5+ â€" Allows you to create various templates including {{cite web}} and {{cite news}}; get the current version or an old version
- citemark (JavaScript) â€" A bookmarklet to help create {{cite web}} templates; see the developer's page for details
- Find sources â€" provides links to customized searches for reliable sources in news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR · free images and the like. Points to a variety of templates for use in talk pages, on the AfD page etc, and for a variety of types of articles and situations.
- OttoBib â€" Generates an alphabetized bibliography of books from a list of International Standard Book Number (ISBN) numbers, with output in MLA, APA, Chicago/Turabian, BibTeX, or Wikipedia format (also generates a permalink)
- References segregator (JavaScript) â€" Shows references in a separate edit window for easy editing; can also convert references to list-defined references format
- toollabs:refill â€" Checks an article for working (non-404) references, corrects titles, adds citation templates, and performs other miscellaneous fixes; can be added to the toolbox with this JavaScript: User:SQL/refcheck.js
- refToolbar (JavaScript) â€" Allows you to format a reference during editing when you already have all the data
- Scopus search add-on â€" Find a reference on Scopus, then with one click it's formatted ready for use in an article
- SnipManager (JavaScript) â€" Adds a Ribbon menu above the edit form with templates (including citations) and the ability to preview citations
- WebCite â€" WebCite archives a copy of an online source, so a citation can link to the archived copy as well as to the original URL (in case the latter changes in future)
- User:CitationTool â€" Semi-bot for finding citation errors and fixing them
- Zotero (cross-platform) â€" Allows you to find articles and easily paste their citations into Wikipedia as citation templates, using (on Windows) Ctrl-Alt-C or right-clicking the article and selecting "Export Selected Item..." then "Wikipedia Citation Templates"; see Wikipedia:Citing sources with Zotero
Citation tools
Reference markup and citation templates may be inserted manually or by use of tools:
- RefToolbar is part of the editing tool bar
- User:Zhaofeng Li/reFill
- ProveIt provides a graphical interface for editing, adding, and citing references. It may be enabled per the documentation
- Citation expander automatically adds missing data to citations using citation templates, and makes corrections to their formatting
- SnipManager adds a ribbon interface to add citations
- wikEd
User scripts
- PleaseStand/References segregator places references into a separate edit box
- Folded references collapses the references of a page
- User:Anomie/ajaxpreview.js adds a preview button that will show references when editing a section
- user:js/ajaxPreview adds a preview button that will show references when editing a section
- RefTooltip sets the tooltip for references to the text of the reference.
- Footnote popups Displays a small popup box of a footnote when you hover the cursor above a footnote link
- ListrefErrors shows errors when using {{listref}}
- HarvErrors shows errors when using Harvard templates
- Sources Formats names of newspapers within citation templates
- Reference exporter
- User:Salix alba/Citoid Generates citation templates using the Citoid server. Standalone javascript which can be used outside of Visual Editor.
- Reference Organizer presents all references in graphical user interface, where you can choose whether the references should be defined in the body of article or in the reference list template(s) (list-defined format). You can also sort the references in various ways (and optionally keep the sort order), and rename the references.
Beta and obsolete
Beta
- Ref++ PubMed search (Beta, November 2009)
- Cite4Wiki Phoenix
Obsolete:
- User:Smith609/Cite
- {{Cite isbn}}
Deprecated
The following bot-filled templates are deprecated.
- {{Cite doi}}
- {{Cite pmid}}
- {{Cite jstor}}
Documentation
These templates can be used in documentation:
Typing aids
- {{cite.php}}: shortcut for mw:Extension:Cite/Cite.php
- {{cite xxx}}: shortcut for Wikipedia:Citation templates
- {{cite *}}: shortcut for {{Citation/core}}
- {{cs1}}: shortcut for Help: Citation Style 1
- {{cs2}}: shortcut for Help: Citation Style 2
- {{fnote}}: shortcut for Help:Footnotes
- {{fnote1}}: shortcut for Wikipedia:Footnote1
- {{fnote2}}: shortcut for Wikipedia:Footnote2
- {{fnote3}}: shortcut for Wikipedia:Footnote3
- {{fnote4}}: shortcut for Wikipedia:Footnote4
- {{ldr}}: shortcut for List-defined references
- {{paren}}: shortcut for Wikipedia:Parenthetical referencing
- {{sfnote}}: shortcut for Help:Shortened footnotes
- {{vcite}}: shortcut for Help:Citation Style Vancouver
Navboxes
- {{Citation Style 1}}: navbox for Citation Style 1 templates
- {{Wikipedia referencing}}: navbox for referencing help pages
Documentation
- {{Citation Style documentation}}: modular documentation for Citation Style 1 and Citation Style 2
- {{Harvard citation documentation}}: documentation for Harvard citations
- {{Markup}}: show markup and rendered output side by side
- {{Refname rules}}: rules for names for footnotes and groups
Replication
- {{Dummy backlink}}: replicate footnote backlinks
- {{Dummy ref}}: replicate footnote in-text cite
- {{Fake heading}}: replicate headings
- {{Fake notes and references}}: replicate Notes and References headings