Help:Citation tools
The following tools should help you to assemble a citation from limited information, with limited effort.
- Web-based template fillers
These are tools with a website interface that provide a complete formatted reference based on a few initial details.
(Requires at least part of the citation text, or a URL link, or any one of several article ID numbers: ISBN, DOI, PMID, PMC, SICI)
- Google Scholar search add-on
- {{Google scholar cite}} – a template front-end for the Universal reference formatter
(Search Google Scholar via this webpage and if you find a source you can click to autofill its details back into the Universal Reference Formatter)
- Scopus search add-on
- Find a reference on Scopus, then with one click it's formatted ready for use in an article.
(Depending on type of source, requires at least some part of citation, or a URL link, or some form of reference ID number)
(Requires a URL link or any one of several article ID numbers: DrugBank ID, HGNC ID, ISBN, PubMed ID, PubMed Central ID, PubChem ID)
(For books only; requires ISBN number)
- Browser Add-ons
These tools can be integrated into your internet browser.
(A Firefox add-in allowing you to create a partial {{cite news}} template. See the developer's page for details.)
(A Javascript gadget, allowing you to format a reference during editing when you already have all the data.)
(A Mozilla Firefox add-on, Zotero 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.")
- Article checkers
These tools can help you complete partial citations that are already in an article.
(Partial citations must either contain a DOI, PMID, PMC, ISBN, or enough fields to be uniquely found.)
(Checks an article for working (non-404) references, corrects titles, adds citation templates, and, preforms other misc. fixes. Can be added to the toolbox with this javascript: User:SQL/refcheck.js)
- Misc
(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).
(OttoBib 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).