Help talk:Citation Style 1

combined location and publisher in |publisher=

Recently I have been encountering templates like this one:

{{Cite book |first=Garth |last=Watson |title=The Civils |publisher=London: Thomas Telford Ltd |page=251 |year=1988 |isbn=0-7277-0392-7}}

where the location of the publisher and the name of the publisher are both shoehorned into |publisher=. Doing this corrupts the template's publisher metadata:

&rft.pub=London%3A+Thomas+Telford+Ltd

when it should be:

&rft.place=London&rft.pub=Thomas+Telford+Ltd

This search (times out) finds about 6100 articles where {{cite book}} has |publisher=<some text>:<some other text>. That isn't a perfect search; it finds stuff like |publisher=[[:ja:講談社現代新書]] but Lua code can do better.

Should we catch these and put them in a maintenance category?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:26, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

A maintenance category sounds like a good idea. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 13:14, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Maintenance to start, yes. After a few AWB runs, we'll have a better idea of what sort of crap is left in it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:50, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Sounds good to me, too. Some botly cleanup of this might be possible to an extent, but I see junk entries in conflicting formats sometimes, e.g. not just "London: Penguin" but "Penguin: London", "Penguin (London)", "London, Penguin", "Penguin London", etc. It would probably eliminate a large blob of them, though, to look for "publisher=" (with extraneous spacing collapsed), followed by major publishing cities (like London, Edinburgh, Paris, Leiden, Milan, Barcelona, New York, Chicago, Boston, etc.) followed by colon-space or space-colon-space, followed by alphanumerics that indicate the actual publisher.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:07, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

In the sandbox. The test is constrained to {{cite book}}, {{cite encyclopedia}}, and {{citation}} without a periodical parameter. The text strings on either side of the colon may be wikilinked:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |publisher=London: Virgin Books}}

Title. London: Virgin Books.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)

{{cite book/new |title=Title |publisher=[[London]]: Virgin Books}}

Title. London: Virgin Books.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)

{{cite encyclopedia/new |title=Title |publisher=London: [[Virgin Books]]}}

Title. London: Virgin Books.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)

{{citation/new |title=Title |publisher=[[:en:London|London]] : [[Virgin Books]]}}

Title, London : Virgin Books{{citation}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)

Articles with this maintenance issue will be categorized in Category:CS1 maint: Publisher location. Better name?

There are publisher names that have a colon:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |publisher=29:11 Publications}}

Title. 29:11 Publications.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)

The maintenance message can be suppressed for these with the accept-as-written markup:

{{cite book/new |title=Title |publisher=((29:11 Publications))}}

Title. 29:11 Publications.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:10, 26 March 2025 (UTC)

This is mostly caused by using Citoid with Worldcat. Izno (talk) 03:26, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

What if a book is in multiple languages?

1101 (talk) 07:05, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

You can comma-separate a list of languages, see Template:Cite book/doc. Thincat (talk) 08:21, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Note that if the book is a collection of separately-authored chapters, you'll probably be citing a chapter rather than the book. Kanguole 10:15, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Proposal: add doi=, pmc=, and pmid= parameters to Template:Cite bioRxiv and other templates for preprint repositories

Since 2023, the National Library of Medicine has been indexing preprints on bioRxiv, medRxiv, arXiv, and Research Square that receive NIH funding on PubMed and PMC and is assigning a DOI to them that is the same as the preprint ID.[1] An example of this is this paper. Note that since it is on PMC, there is a free full version of the text on PMC, so maybe including pmc= should make title= link to the PMC page like the cite journal template does. For doi=, maybe make it so that either bioRxiv=/etc. or doi= can be used, but not both, since they link to the same page. The DOI/bioRxiv/etc., PMCID, and PMID should display in the same order as what the cite journal template displays. I have used the preprint I linked on the article "1993 Four Corners hantavirus outbreak" (it is ref 17) but the citation is incomplete given the current restrictions, so I think it would be good to fix this. Velayinosu (talk) 01:09, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

URL status language change request

Moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) § URL status language change request

 – Sdkb ^talk 03:13, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

Affiliation?

It is common for textbooks to be published under the auspices of a university but printed by an external publisher.An example is a textbook written at the Department of Mathematics, Harvard University but published by Jones and Bartlett. The obvious parameter, |institution=Department of Mathematics, [[Harvard University]] won't work because |institution= is an alias of |publisher=. -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:47, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

That's because "affiliation" is bibliographically irrelevant and is not information that needs to be included. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:57, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

References

module suite update 12–13 April 2025

I propose to update the cs1|2 module suite over the weekend 12–13 April 2025. Here are the changes:

Module:Citation/CS1:

• add module entry points; discussion
• tighten protocol-relative url-in-title test; discussion
• emit error message when isbn present for pre-1965 publication date; discussion
• add maintenance category for |publisher= with location + publisher; discussion
• properties category for |vauthors= and |veditors= that use accept-as-written markup; discussion

Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration:

• add free doi prefix recognition for

  Advanced Electronic Materials, Learned Publishing

  Natural Language Processing, Natural Language Processing Journal

  Documenta Mathematica, EMS Magazine, Algebraic Geometry

• emit error message when isbn present for pre-1965 pub date
• add maintenance category for |publisher= with location + publisher
• properties category for |vauthors= and |veditors= that use accept-as-written markup

Module:Citation/CS1/Identifiers:

• emit error message when isbn present for pre-1965 pub date

Module:Citation/CS1/COinS:

• strip html markup from |pages=; discussion

—Trappist the monk (talk) 00:15, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

ISSN Link Correction in module:Citation/CS1/Configuration

The ISSN link should be corrected from https://www.worldcat.org/issn to https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/. The first link leads to a general search engine, while the second directs to the official ISSN database page for the journal.   Mohammed Qays  (🗣) 17:21, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

Sort of discussed at Help talk:Citation Style 1/Archive 80 § ISSN in portal.issn.org not in WorldCat. There was no consensus at that discussion to modify how cs1|2 links |issn= values.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 17:54, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

@Trappist the monk see ISSN (P236)   Mohammed Qays  (🗣) 18:00, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

What wikidata chooses to do has no relevance at en.wiki and certainly does not constitute consensus here.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 18:18, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I'd support the change personally, per WP:POLA, irrespective of what Wikidata does. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:29, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

I second that. —DocWatson42 (talk) 02:08, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

OCLC value limit needs to be increased

The OCLC value limit needs to be increased. Per Help:CS1 errors, it is currently set at 10450000000, and I have inputted a correct OCLC value that surpasses the current limit and thus it is telling me there is an error.

• Nichols, David (December 2024). "Affect, Repetition, and Eroticized State Violence in El Salvador's Prisons". Social Text. 42 (4): 1–32. doi:10.1215/01642472-11369764. ISSN 0164-2472. OCLC 10462479762.

I checked the CS1 error help page and it said I should report the issue here. PizzaKing13 (¡Hablame!) 🍕👑 20:46, 11 April 2025 (UTC)

"n.d.a", "n.d. a", or "n.d.-a"

Coming from Module talk:Footnotes#"n.d.a" vs. "n.d. a"

How should CS1 and the harv/sfn templates handle author-date citations where there are multiple sources with the same author and no date? CS1 (and major citation methods) append a letter to YYYY years, so two 1997 dates become 1997a & 1997b. For citations with no date, CS1 accepts n.d. (or nd). For multiple citations with no date, CS1 only accepts n.d.a. An editor at Module talk:Footnotes explains, 'But I don't think most people would write "n.d.a", which looks like the a is part of an acronym.' This is probably true. Only 45 articles use {{cite web}} and "n.d.a". A spaced format was suggested: '"n.d. a" is much clearer. I would suggest that both should be allowed, as should "nd a" in contrast to "nda"' Looking into major citation styles, they suggest "n.d.-a".^APACMOS[2] Whatever solution would be implemented for the short citations should match the solution for the full citations. I would prefer a single method to a bunch of methods, personally. Whatever method is expected for CS1 should probably be spelled out somewhere in the documentation, but I don't see it. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 03:28, 12 April 2025 (UTC)

15 April 2025 edit request

Greetings and felicitations. In {{Cite podcast}}, the word "Podcast" is capitalized, but I don't know why that is or should be the case.

• Host (17 April 2025). "Title". website (Podcast). Publisher. Retrieved 17 April 2025.

I request that it be changed to lower case, please. —DocWatson42 (talk) 02:06, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

I have no opinion on the matter, but please note that this is the same for other templates, e.g. {{Cite report}}, {{Cite speech}}, {{Cite map}}, {{Cite press release}} etc. Surely this should be kept consistent, one way or the other. Keriluamox (talk) 17:23, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

I agree with Keriluamox about consistency. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:15, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

APA is the most popular published citation format that uses curly and square brackets. It capitalizes the first word inside the parentheses or square brackets. This aligns with how CS1 does it. Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 18:16, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

I will restate the original example, but showing the wikitext as well as the result.

{{cite podcast |host=Host|title=Title |website=website |publisher=Publisher |date={{LOCALDAY}} {{LOCALMONTHNAME}} {{LOCALYEAR}} |url=http://example.org |access-date={{LOCALDAY}} {{LOCALMONTHNAME}} {{LOCALYEAR}}}}

Host (17 April 2025). "Title". website (Podcast). Publisher. Retrieved 17 April 2025.

I believe the issue is "(Podcast)" which appears after the name of the website, which in the example is website. Since that used neither curly nor square brackets, I don't understand what Rjjiii's comment is about. Jc3s5h (talk) 18:37, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

@Jc3s5h, oof, my bad, curved brackets (parentheses). Also, I'm not saying you used them; the CS1 templates use them. The CS1 example above uses the capitalized "Podcast" and APA advises the capitalized "Audio podcast". Harvard citation style has also influenced CS1 and capitalizes "Podcast". IEEE also capitalizes "Podcast". Vancouver uses the generic "Internet" but still capitalized.

If you want to hide "Podcast", you could use |type=none like this:

{{Cite podcast |type=none |host=Host |title=Title |website=website |publisher=Publisher |date={{LOCALDAY}} {{LOCALMONTHNAME}} {{LOCALYEAR}} |url=http://example.org |access-date={{LOCALDAY}} {{LOCALMONTHNAME}} {{LOCALYEAR}} |no-tracking=yes}}

Host (17 April 2025). "Title". website. Publisher. Retrieved 17 April 2025.

Also, since type could take pretty much anything, you could just type the default in lowercase, but I think this would become a huge hassle to do on every citation in an article:

{{Cite podcast |type=podcast |host=Host |title=Title |website=website |publisher=Publisher |date={{LOCALDAY}} {{LOCALMONTHNAME}} {{LOCALYEAR}} |url=http://example.org |access-date={{LOCALDAY}} {{LOCALMONTHNAME}} {{LOCALYEAR}} |no-tracking=yes}}

Host (17 April 2025). "Title". website (podcast). Publisher. Retrieved 17 April 2025.

Good luck, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 19:39, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Since Wikipedia has depricated parenthetical referencing, I'm inclined to disregard APA, since that uses parenthetical referencing. Also, Harvard referencing doesn't seem to be a specific style manual, just a general approach. Chicago Manual of Style 18th ed., ¶ 14.169 gives one example with "...The Loudest Girl in the World, podcast,..." and another that doesn't include the word "podcast" at all. Jc3s5h (talk) 19:56, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

CS1 was based on APA's general full citation format though. Unlike CMOS, APA and CS1 put the publication date/year in parentheses after the author names, for instance. Yes, there are various deviations between APA and CS1, but the influence is there for the full citation, even if parenthetical referencing was deprecated in favor of footnotes. Imzadi 1979 → 22:44, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

ISBN / Date incompatibility

Moved from Help:CS1 errors § ISBN / Date incompatibility

On the recent addition made by @Trappist the monk, I’d like to point out that an error is detected and displayed even when |publication-date= is filled with a date later than 1965, which doesn’t seem quite right. Keriluamox (talk) 20:33, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Evidence? Always provide evidence of failure so we-all know what it is that you are seeing. Here is a template that uses |publication-date=1951 and has an isbn:

{{cite book|authorlink=C. S. Lewis|editor-first=Kaye|editor-last=Webb|editor-link=Kaye Webb|first=C. S.|isbn=0-14-030173-9|last=Lewis|location=Harmondsworth|others=illus. Pauline Baynes|publisher=[[Puffin Books]]|title=Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia |publication-date=1951}}

Lewis, C. S. (1951). Webb, Kaye (ed.). Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia. illus. Pauline Baynes. Harmondsworth: Puffin Books. ISBN 0-14-030173-9. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)

A proper error message. If I change the date to 1965 (don't do this in real-life unless the date matches the isbn):

{{cite book|authorlink=C. S. Lewis|editor-first=Kaye|editor-last=Webb|editor-link=Kaye Webb|first=C. S.|isbn=0-14-030173-9|last=Lewis|location=Harmondsworth|others=illus. Pauline Baynes|publisher=[[Puffin Books]]|title=Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia |publication-date=1965}}

Lewis, C. S. (1965). Webb, Kaye (ed.). Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia. illus. Pauline Baynes. Harmondsworth: Puffin Books. ISBN 0-14-030173-9.

No error message.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 23:14, 15 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. I wasn’t clear enough. The error is detected when there’s a main |date= earlier than 1965, and a |publication-date= later. Say:

{{cite book|last=Smith|first=John|title=Title|date=1950|location=Place|publisher=Publisher|publication-date=2000|isbn=0-14-030173-9}}

Smith, John (1950). Title. Place: Publisher (published 2000). ISBN 0-14-030173-9. {{cite book}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)

It seems to me that the publication date here should determine whether there might be an ISBN or not. Keriluamox (talk) 06:12, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

There does seem to be a problem here. The help page says, "ISBNs were created c. 1965. Books published before that date will not have been issued an ISBN."

This isn't very helpful - I'm not sure of the exact details, but plenty of books published before 1965 were (presumably later) given ISBNs. e.g. I've just been editing a page and got this error:

Congar, Yves Marie-Joseph (1957), Lay people in the Church: a study for a theology of laity, Westminster: Christian Classics, ISBN 978-0870611148 {{citation}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)

Searching for this ISBN correctly finds the publication in question, even though it was published pre-1965. I don't see the problem with using ISBNs later assigned to pre-1965 publications, or the advantage in displaying a public error message in articles which legitimately and helpfully use ISBNs, assigned after 1965, for pre-1965 publications. TSP (talk) 11:22, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

It looks like the version with that ISBN was published in 1985 rather than 1957. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 17:34, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Can someone explain why it was decided to flag up ISBNs on old books as an error. To me it seems counterintuitive to omit a useful identifier or have to use the (cumbersome) use as written syntax just because the book predates the introduction of ISBN. If, as seems to be the case, an ISBN can be assigned retrospectively e.g. a reprint, then classing these as errors feels wrong. A 2014 reprint of a 1950 book is still a 1950 publication. Insisting on |date=1950 and |publication-date=2014 is, IMO, getting overly picky and reduces the benefits of using CS1 references in the first place. If it is of any relevance then at best these cases should be a tracking category and not an error. Nthep (talk) 08:30, 17 April 2025 (UTC)

The following template produces an error message related to ISBN:

Allen, R. H. (1963) [1899], Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning (Reprint ed.), New York, NY: Dover Publications Inc., p. 61, ISBN 978-0-486-21079-7, retrieved 2010-12-12. {{citation}}: ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)

The book says it was "first published in 1963", which is before ISBN was created. There is no information about later editions, but the ISBN in the template is valid. Is there a work-around for the error? Thank you. Praemonitus (talk) 13:27, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

From FAQs: ISBN Eligibility published by Bowker, the entity that assigns ISBNs in the United states:

Historical documents

Yes. Historical documents archived in a library or museum are part of the bibliographic record of interest to researchers. They meet the criteria for discoverability and reporting that is part of the ISBN system.

Jc3s5h (talk) 14:11, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Why exactly is 1965 the cutoff date? I get that's when SBNs were first proposed, but some books have SBNs/ISBNs assigned retroactively, no? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:32, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Specifically when there's a reprint of an edition, that reprint gets an ISBN, but the ISBN is the same for accross the same edition (original [1950], first reprint [1970], second reprint [1983]). And that's how you end up with pre 1965 books with have ISBNs. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:42, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

In such a case, what year would you use as the primary date which appears after the author’s name and in Harvard-style references? I’d go with Smith, John (1950) etc. (published 1983), rather than with Smith, John (1983) [1950]. It seems to me that the year the author made the text is more relevant than the year a publisher reprinted it. Keriluamox (talk) 17:32, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Praemonitus, this is only a workaround and not a solution, but if you use the paren-syntax to ignore errors, then you get:

Example using |isbn=(( <isbn-number> ))

{{citation | postscript=. | title=Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning | last=Allen | first=R. H. | author-link=Richard Hinckley Allen | edition=Reprint | publisher=Dover Publications Inc. | year=1963 | orig-year=1899 | page=61 | location=New York, NY | isbn=((978-0-486-21079-7))<!--avoid Help:CS1_errors#invalid_isbn_date in pre-1965 isbn--> | url=https://archive.org/details/starnamestheirlo00alle/page/61 | access-date=2010-12-12 | url-access=registration }} generates: Allen, R. H. (1963) [1899], Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning (Reprint ed.), New York, NY: Dover Publications Inc., p. 61, ISBN 978-0-486-21079-7, retrieved 2010-12-12.{{citation}}: CS1 maint: ignored ISBN errors (link)

It's still worth working out a more permanent solution, but does this tide you over until you have that? Mathglot (talk) 18:27, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

I do not think it is appropriate to use the date of a reprint (by the same publisher, not a revised edition) as the primary publication date of a reference. If the citation template calls it out as an error when we include an isbn from a reprint, while keeping the actual date of publication of the edition, then the citation template is broken. The date of publication is important for readers who might want to know how current the information from the reference is. The date of reprint is not. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:23, 16 April 2025 (UTC)

Thanks Mathglot, that fixes the error in this case. However, the reference is used in a large number of articles so a more general fix would be good. Praemonitus (talk) 23:56, 16 April 2025 (UTC)