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Template:Cite journal is permanently protected from editing, as it is a heavily used or visible template. Substantial changes should be proposed here, and made by administrators if the proposal is uncontroversial, or has been discussed and is supported by consensus. Use {{editprotected}} to attract the attention of an administrator in such cases. Any contributor may edit the template's documentation to add usage notes, categories or interwiki links.

Archives

Journal reference Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3: Dec 2006 - Nov 2007

[edit] Topics from 2007

[edit] Gap in Archive-3 talk

Almost all previous topics from 2007 have been archived into Archive 3, but an early topic from 17Jan2007 ("Template expansion needed") was left here, creating a wiki-spastic gap of about one year. I don't have time to sort the issues to see if that topic should be moved into Archive 3 or if the topic should remain active here long-term. Just note the 1 year gap, indicated by "Topics from 2008". -Wikid77 (talk) 22:12, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] how to cite an cached/archived URL?

[edit] Template expansion needed

This template (basically, all citation templates, not only the journal article one) needs urgent expansion / update to allow the addition of a second URL (URLcached = ...) to include the inclusion of a link to a snapshot / archived copy of a cited URL (e.g. IA, WebCite etc.), to avoid 404s. Alternatively or in addition, one could add something like WebCiteID = .... to the template, which is rendered as a link to the handle at www.webcitation.org (e.g. to the address www.webcitation.org/ID, where ID is the WebCiteID). Caching date is probably not needed as a variable, as WebCite tells you the cached date.--74.98.91.29 16:14, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

This issue does not seem to have been addressed yet. I have copied the parameters "archiveurl" and "archivedate" from {{cite web}} into my use of {{cite journal}} for Iwo Jima, like so:

| archiveurl = http://web.archive.org/web/20050622081837/http://www.foobar.com/…

| archivedate = 2005-08-25

If no one volunteers quickly to implement these parameters, I will be bold, maybe even reckless, and use my rudimentary template skills to do so. Template wizards, please help us avoid potential disaster by doing a professional job instead. ☺ ~ Jeff Q (talk) 18:22, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Is this really needed for journals? Note that a user is running a bot to tell WebCite to archive all of our external links. See User:Gwern/Archive-bot.hs. — Omegatron 02:31, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

There are two reasons why WebCite and the bot don't completely solve this problem.

First, this bot certainly is not getting all the external links that have broken. For example, the last broken link I had to remove, an ABC News story supporting a statement in Binary prefix, is not cached by WebCite.

Second, even if the bot were total and instant, it can't collect citations that aren't provided. Editors routinely added unsourced statements to articles, often quoting material without attribution. I've often found the sources and quotes to be from a webpage from a journal, but like many magazines with both a print and web presence, only the most recent issues still have live links. (Witness my attempt to source a quote from Iwo Jima that, with 15 minutes' research through a number of sources, I found in an expired webpage copy of Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. The Wayback Machine has it; WebCite does not.) Bots cannot do this kind of source research, and it's unreasonable to think that the relative handful of editors who diligently attempt to source statements can actually beat all the expirations of these uncited source links.

These two examples are exactly the last two broken links I tried to track down, so WebCite is 0 for 2 in my sourcing work. As with any other human endeavor, one size never fits all — we need multiple ways to make it possible to provide archived information. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 11:49, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

But the ABC news article is not a journal. I don't understand why the journal template needs an archive url, since the journal itself is an archive. Do you mean that you want a parameter to link to a copy of the article that's not behind a sign-in page? — Omegatron 02:23, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

I did not mention the ABC News link as an example of a journal citation, but as an example of why WebCite is not sufficient for archiving external links. Broken {{cite web}} links don't have the problem that broken {{cite journal}} links have precisely because the former includes archive parameters. And journals are not archives; they are published periodicals which may or may not have webpages for their articles. If they have them, they can break, and I've demonstrated that they do. My concern is also not about journals with sign-on requirements, but only those whose freely accessible webpages at some point disappear, especially when they remain available through sites like Internet Archive. ({{Cite news}} has exactly the same problem of expiring links, and has exactly the same archive parameters as {{cite web}} to cover this situation. It is logical for an editor to expect exactly the same capability in exactly the same form for exactly the same problem in citing journal webpages.)

Ultimately, the goal of sourcing, for which these templates are designed, is to provide the ability to verify source information. If a journal article has a web copy, it's far quicker and easier to use that to verify the information than to be forced to go to a local university or purchase an expensive professional subscription just to check a few lines in an article. The easier we make proper verification, the more likely it will get done.

In short, I don't understand why it should be so hard to see the need for these parameters. There's a webpage with a journal article that anyone can access. Sometimes it breaks, like any other webpage. When it does, it often has an archive copy available. We want to cite the archive. Why shouldn't we have the same archive parameters that {{cite web}} provides? I'm open to alternatives, but I see no reason for inventive changes when we have a de facto standard way of handling the problem. ~ Jeff Q (talk) 03:21, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

Current means can effectively archive some articles I have prepared an example below (See Here) I know there are not a lot of journals that are currently published in this fashion. But even few in numbers adding the function of |archiveurl= and |archivedate= provide the ability to verify source information if the journal is taken down. Ctempleton3 (talk) 17:42, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Archive Example of Journal Article to Archive

Let me add to this discussion, here is a good example of a journal article that is perfect for archiving.

Hason, Mark (November 2006). "Something Big is in The Air" (PDF). Boeing Frontiers: 34-37. 

Ctempleton3 (talk) 17:42, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Topics from 2008

[edit] Removing the ending space

{{editprotected}}

I would like to request that the space at the very end of the generated HTML be removed. Sometimes a sentence or a few words appear after a citation and it looks weird to either put no space between {{cite journal}} and the other markup or leave two spaces.

I believe that removing the   on this line:

  -->">&nbsp;</span></includeonly><noinclude>

would do the trick. « D Trebbien (talk) 18:37 2008 January 3 (UTC)

Indeed that does look weird. Done. DMacks (talk) 21:42, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

But it was intentional! It allows COinS in the citaitons. By removing the space, you broke the COinS (despite the explanation, above. --Karnesky (talk)

[edit] Use Language templates in Language field

Could it make sense to either use the language templates in the field, or take the data from the field and use it as input in a language template? For example, either use {{en}} in the field, or use en in the field and have the cite journal generate the {{en}} code, in both cases generating (English) as output. papageno (talk) 04:39, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Using {{en}} as the input in the language field results in displayed text: (in (English)) papageno (talk) 23:37, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

But that produces double parenthesis. Why can't we just enter the ISO 639-1 code? --Bender235 (talk) 11:32, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

"English" should never be specified as it can be safely assumed as a default here on English Wikipedia, likewise "format=html" is just clutter (fine specify the deviation from expectation to non-English or non-webpage links). We certainly do not need coloured lanaguage names to act as a distration :-) David Ruben ^Talk 12:13, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Using English was only an example. Yes, don’t populate the field with English as that is the default. The language icons that appear from invoking for example {{de icon}} for the language = German parameter in {{Cite news}} appear in a suitably restrained ;-) bold grey. I propose that the language parameter be used to invoke a language icon, just as done with {{Cite news}}. papageno (talk) 18:32, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Additional parameter needed to cite online library/database/subscription service

Following the MLA style, it would need the parameters of citing a periodical, plus some:

"(author, article title, periodical title, and volume, date, and page number information) followed by the name of the database or subscription collection, the name of the library through which you accessed the content, including the library's city and state, plus date of access. If a URL is available for the home page of the service, include it." [1]

Earthsound (talk) 16:35, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, it should be added. Renata (talk) 07:30, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm unsure what exactly should be added. This is pretty much already done according to the MLA ref. Most subscription-based services provide DOIs or PubMed IDs for their articles, which should be linked to using this template. Once a user clicks the link, they will know if they need to have a subscription or not (and if they do this from a University library, they will likely be forwarded directly to the article). Information regarding the name of library, city and state/province through which access was granted for one user should never appear in this reference. +mt 08:21, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal to show DOI link as string DOI but not as DOI number doi:10.1109/MSPEC.2005.1526906 (example)

{{editprotected}} I suggest to amend the Cite journal template and similar templates where this applies as follows:

• Show DOI links as simple three-character string doi (example) or as (doi) - but no longer as full doi number doi:10.1109/MSPEC.2005.1526906.

Reasoning: the current full DOI number clutters up the citation lines with, in my view, secondary information. Therefore I'd like to propose to modify the template so that it shows only the short doi indicator (which of course is text of a link to the doi repository) as mentioned above.

--Wikinaut (talk) 22:28, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

My only concern with this is that "doi" doesn't help anyone find the publication in a library since the DOI is hidden (try clicking the Printable version link on the left-hand menu). If it is agreed that this modification is good, could the Wikipedia:CSS be modified to show the DOI for the printed version? This would for example show doi in the web version and the

full doi:10.1109/MSPEC.2005.1526906 in the printed version. I'm not a CSS pro, otherwise I'd start to do something.... Anyone familiar with CSS for Wikipedia out there? +mt 22:41, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

@ m

I agree with you in that respect and had the same (minor) concerns. --Wikinaut (talk) 23:49, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. We don't hide the volume and page info, why do we hide the doi identifier? --Rifleman 82 (talk) 00:29, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

I think it's redundant with journal:volume:page shown. I've never seen the doi listed in the references section of a journal. (I mostly read astrophysics/astronomy journals and Nature and Science.) In journals, it is used to form links, but in a behind-the-scenes fashion. I think it would look a bit better to follow that convention on Wikipedia. Ashill (talk) 18:39, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Restraints on the length of paper versions are probably the reason why dois are not shown in journals (and names of journals are often abbreviated). — fnielsen (talk) 22:37, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

The print version definitely should print the DOI. Shouldn't it also be available for web browser cut and paste activities? Some DOI strings haven't worked with the Wikipedia DOI code so have to be manually retrieved. -- SEWilco (talk) 20:44, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

In my experience, these are mainly the Wiley Interscience links. Left and right angle brackets (< and >) always break the template; replacing them with

%3C and %3E

solves the problem. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 17:51, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

What information does the doi convey that journal:volume:page doesn't convey? That's the information I want to find the article on the stacks in a library. I prefer the behavior of the citation template, which forms the link from the title based on the doi if no URL is specified. That behavior exploits the strength of the doi effectively—it creates a link that will always work, even when journals change the URL format. Ashill (talk) 14:44, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure what your point is, but since most journals are available electronically, DOIs allow one-click access to the cited reference. That's the most helpful bit. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 17:51, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

The citation template makes the link from the article title point to the doi, giving the one click access without visual clutter that I don't think provides useful information.

• cite journal template: Basri, Gibor (2000). "Observations of Brown Dwarfs". Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 38: 485. doi:10.1146/annurev.astro.38.1.485. 
• citation template: Basri, Gibor (2000), “Observations of Brown Dwarfs”, Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics 38: 485, DOI 10.1146/annurev.astro.38.1.485 

Ashill (talk) 18:10, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Your point wasn't previously obvious. I still feel very strongly that the doi should be displayed, for the same points I have previously mentioned, but I'll leave it to others to give their opinions. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 18:28, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

I would like to keep the DOI numbers visible.

• This allows us to link to the WP article about DOI to inform people what it is they can click on or use as a reference.
• It is consistent with the behavior for ISSN/ISBN/etc.
• The information is useful. It helps locate articles because:
  • Sometimes human-readable metadata has mistakes
  • Sometimes human-readable metadata is too incomplete to refer to the specific reference in question.
  • We don't currently print URLs, so the DOI may be used from print outs, etc.

If the only objection to the DOI is that some think that it is unaesthetic, I think the best thing to do would be to enclose it in a semantic SPAN & allow individual users to make use of their user-JS or user-CSS to give their personally-preferred appearance. --Karnesky (talk) 22:59, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] COinS gone?

{{editprotected}}

It looks like the cite journal template is no longer generating COinS (see dicussion above, e.g. the reference section of the article Stellar nucleosynthesis does no longer provide "<span class='Z3988'" elements for journal articles. Any chance to check the current template implementation? Thanks --Ioverka (talk) 22:08, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes--it was removed when an nbsp was removed. I'd also like it back! --Karnesky (talk) 19:33, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Added back. DMacks (talk) 20:11, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Please replace the space with a hair space  , or, better yet, a zero-width space, ​. (See Space (punctuation)). « D. Trebbien (talk) 02:44 2008 February 10 (UTC)

Y Done. Happy‑melon 12:08, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Above choice of 8203 broke display in Internet Explorer. Not that that's a bad thing... LeadSongDog (talk) 21:49, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bolface in volume parameter clashes

The template currently makes volume information boldfaced. This makes it appear out of sorts in reference lists since nothing else in reference lists is ever boldfaced. I understand this may arise from a formal convention. In that event, I'll live with it. Otherwise, I think the bolding should be removed.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 07:40, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Agree, and as per Template_talk:Cite_journal/Archive 2#Publication_volume_number_in_bold_.2F_additional_data_.2F_descriptive_labels David Ruben ^Talk 19:43, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Also agree (now that it is done). +mt 19:54, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Disagree: ....for what it's worth. it is now much more difficult to differentiate between volume and issue, particularly since the many editors for one reason or another leave out one or the other. also, now there is a discordance between the 'manual' citations and those done by template. convention is there for a reason. --emerson7 21:32, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Note: The issue number follows the volume in parenthesis, e.g., volume 4, issue 8 is: 4 (8). Several publishers (namely Elsevier) use this format. +mt 04:24, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with this change. It is standard in many of the sciences to print the volume number in boldface, so it is clearly distinguished from the issue and page numbers. This change should not have been made without discussion.--Srleffler (talk) 05:35, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

Also Disagree. Volume number in bold is a very widely used standard, and helps to untangle the morass of numbers in the citation without adding extra verbiage.

I strongly Disagree with the change as well, and I feel that I have given it enough time in trial. I am finding that the volume is now something that I am constantly checking and re-checking because it blends in exactly the same as the issue and page numbers.

Also, it is an international consensus to bold the volume, which makes it especially convenient for me to fish out references from foreign-language research papers and articles. I would think that non-English speakers would appreciate being able to utilize the same standard.

Please undo. « D. Trebbien (talk) 02:38 2008 March 21 (UTC)

[I moved the comment below here from lower on this page, to keep the discussion tidy. The user below was unaware of the discussion above when leaving this comment.]--Srleffler (talk) 14:58, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

I would like to request that this template be edited so that when the volume number is displayed in the References section; it is listed in bold. That is one aspect of the {{citation}} template that I prefer (the bolding of the volume number), and I would like to see it duplicated in this template. 66.30.221.105 (talk) 15:43, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

I see now that there is a related discussion here; where I have commented. 66.30.221.105 (talk) 15:47, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

The editors above request that the boldface on the volume number be restored. See also discussion of this issue at Template talk:Citation--Srleffler (talk) 14:53, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Y Done Seems to have consensus (or at least proves there wasn't really consensus for the change in the first place). Happy‑melon 23:07, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

Bless you, sir! It looks so much better. —Werson (talk) 01:07, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Current discussion at Citation

Currently cite journal no longer bolds the volume, and citation does. Clearly consistency should be applied, but which way. Discussion open at Template talk:Citation#Boldface volume David Ruben ^Talk 21:26, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How about giving editors an option?

Ouch. This recent change back is a hassle, since some citations are more complicated, and combine uses of Template:Cite journal with handwritten additions (e.g., citations to supplements or corrections). When the template was changed from bold to roman I changed the fonts on all the volume numbers in these handwritten citations. Now I'm supposed to change them back?

How about making it easy for an article to choose which style it prefers, bold or roman? Maybe some new argument to Template:Reflist or some other one-line usage like that? I preferred the bold style, but now that I've seen it in roman for a while, I prefer roman now. Clearly there is not a consensus in this area, and it should be easy for an article to specify one style or another. Eubulides (talk) 21:39, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't really have an opinion on bold/not-bold, but I do think that having a choice is completely unnecessary. The whole point of the template is to ensure standardisation between references, not to encourage individual characteristics. Have a straw poll if necessary to decide which one to run with - but make sure it's consistent with {{citation}} and any other similar templates. Happy‑melon 21:43, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

The argument about standardization is undermined by the fact that Template:Cite journal already has a quotes option that changes the appearance of the citation. No doubt this change was made because there was lack of consensus about whether titles should be quoted. And this is not the only option that affects appearance; there's also a curly option. Eubulides (talk) 01:17, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Eubulides, do you have an example in mind of why you would want to "[change] the fonts on ... the volume numbers"? « D. Trebbien (talk) 02:26 2008 March 25 (UTC)

Sure; please see Autism #cite note-Filipek-21. It says "Filipek PA, Accardo PJ, Baranek GT et al. (1999). "The screening and diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorders". J Autism Dev Disord 29 (6): 439–84. doi:10.1023/A:1021943802493.  Erratum (2000). J Autism Dev Disord 30 (1): 81. doi:10.1023/A:1017256313409. PMID 10638459." Notice how the volume number is bold for the article, but not for the erratum. Both volume numbers used to be roman until the change yesterday. The source is "{{cite journal |author= Filipek PA, Accardo PJ, Baranek GT ''et al.'' |title= The screening and diagnosis of autistic spectrum disorders |journal= J Autism Dev Disord |date=1999 |volume=29 |issue=6 |pages=439–84 |doi=10.1023/A:1021943802493}} Erratum (2000). ''J Autism Dev Disord'' 30 (1): 81. {{doi|10.1023/A:1017256313409}}. PMID 10638459." The erratum had to be formatted by hand since there's no template for it. Obviously I can go and change the erratum volume number by hand, as well as several other similarly-formatted references by hand, but I'd rather just say "please use roman volume numbers on this page". Eubulides (talk) 03:01, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

I am wondering if, for the sake of consistency, the volume of the errata could also be bolded. Perhaps like this:

"Erratum" . J Autism Dev Disord 30 (1): 81. doi:10.1023/A:1017256313409. 

This, I think, looks good. « D. Trebbien (talk) 02:02 2008 March 26 (UTC)

That substitute is inadequate. It quotes "Erratum", which isn't correct: it's an erratum, not a paper whose title is "Erratum". Worse, it doesn't give a year for the erratum. My best attempt at fixing those two problems results in:

Erratum (2000). J Autism Dev Disord 30 (1): 81. doi:10.1023/A:1017256313409. PMID 10638459. 

but this isn't right either, since the year is put before the word "Erratum". Is there some way to fix this year-before-title problem with "Cite journal"? If so, that would be an adequate substitute for the consistency problem. Eubulides (talk) 06:15, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

What about placing "Erratum" in the author= field:

Erratum (2000). "{{{title}}}". J Autism Dev Disord 30 (1): 81. doi:10.1023/A:1017256313409. 

« D. Trebbien (talk) 14:26 2008 March 26 (UTC)

... and making title optional. « D. Trebbien (talk) 14:27 2008 March 26 (UTC)

"Erratum" is not the author, and shouldn't be put in the author= field; misusing a field like that is a recipe for confusion and more problems down the road. Instead, how about changing "Cite journal" so that it puts the year after the title if no author is given? That would fix the problem. Eubulides (talk) 07:32, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

I like that.

(Either tonight or tomorrow night I will post the template markup for this proposed change, as I can't do this right now.)

« D. Trebbien (talk) 14:26 2008 March 27 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

I believe that these changes these changes that I made to a fork of {{cite journal}} will work. Administrators may also want to see my sandbox.

The changes also include a fix to the trailing space problem which has been recently discussed. « D. Trebbien (talk) 05:19 2008 March 29 (UTC)

Several people noted that entity 8203 did not render properly in their browsers (particularly IE users). --05:45, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

There are several zero-width spacing characters and when I looked at them in Internet Explorer last night, one displayed as a box, so I thought that that was the problematic one.

Granted, it could have been that the problem was fixed in IE 7 (which is what I have on a Vista machine), but I just now checked it on IE 6 on Windows 2000 and there is still no box.

How about a thin space &#8202?

« D. Trebbien (talk) 23:53 2008 March 29 (UTC)

(unindenting) All unicode entitites that have already been tried on this page have led to complaints about not being rendered. This includes both 8202 and 8203. We have not tried putting a span WITHIN COinS that would hide the space, as per my comment, something like:

<span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&....><span style="display: none;">&nbsp;</span></span>

may or may not work. --Karnesky (talk) 00:19, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't think &#8202 (thin space) has been tried. Regardless, I just tried your solution and it works.

This is much more preferable to trailing whitespace. Thanks!

« D. Trebbien (talk) 02:32 2008 March 30 (UTC)

edit where 8202 was applied --Karnesky (talk) 02:43, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

I just thought of something else: the COinS span should wrap all of the markup for the citation; ie, start the span before everything and end it after everything. « D. Trebbien (talk) 23:58 2008 March 29 (UTC)

(unindenting) Absolutely not. Some tools that process replace the contents of that whole span. For users or such tools, there would be no human-readable form of a citation. The vast majority of other sites that have COinS either run on servers that permit an empty span (which WP does not) or they use nbsp. --Karnesky (talk) 00:19, 30 March 2008 (UTC)

Y Done with the contents of http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3ADtrebbien%2FTemplates%2FCite_journal&diff=201956362&oldid=201729271 - looks good to me, but needs thorough checking. Happy‑melon 15:54, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I've used it in this edit to Autism, along with a few other articles. Looks good. Eubulides (talk) 05:05, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The date in parentheses should be moved after the volume/issue.

See Chicago Manual of Style section 17.164. Is there a reason why we have it after the author name? -- Avi (talk) 17:25, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't know, date immediately after the author name does provide closer matching criteria to full references cited via the author-date system (Harvard referencing). --SallyScot (talk) 18:38, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

and keeps this consistant with layout of other citation templates. David Ruben ^Talk 21:51, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Compare with {{cite news}} which follows the Chicago Manual of Style 17.188 almost exactly, with date after name, title, and publication. There is an inconsistency that needs to be addressed. -- Avi (talk) 01:07, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

According to this, "[Harvard referencing] is one of three citation styles recommended for Wikipedia. The other two are embedded links and footnotes". I have not contributed to that page, but I support the position (as I am biased by similar reference formats in the sciences). +mt 02:15, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

---

Cite journal currently looks like APA style in many respects. At least in as much as APA also has a parenthesised date following the author names. Some of the later fields have different separators or different emphasis. Another difference is that, similar to most of the formal styles in e.g. this linked guide at least - the URL is displayed explicitly, rather than masked with the article title. - Though this may be more of a consideration for citing an online source from within a printed document.

According to http://www.bedfordstmartins.com/online/cite6.html#1 - using APA style, a journal article appearing in an electronic journal should be cited like this for example...

• Fine, M., & Kurdek, L. A. (1993). Reflections on determining authorship credit and authorship order on faculty-student collaborations. American Psychologist, 48, 1141-1147. Retrieved June 7, 1999, from http://www.apa.org/journals/amp/kurdek.html

{{cite journal}} renders it like this...

• Fine, M., & Kurdek, L. A. (1993). Reflections on determining authorship credit and authorship order on faculty-student collaborations. American Psychologist 48: 1141-1147. 

In any case, what might be really neat would be if citation templates such as {{cite journal}} could incorporate a style parameter. If not included (or its entered value was unrecognised) then it could default to an agreed style. Otherwise, if a recognised style such as MLA, APA, Chicago or CBE style were specified, then the template would have the necessary smarts to format the citation in that particular way. I'd imagine it'd be a lot of development effort to get it fully working that way though.

Again I could be wrong, but is Wikipedia really strictly following Chicago Manual of Style? And again in any case, note that according to this link - Chicago can have date appearing immediately after the author (but not in parenthesis). It also says at the bottom of that webpage "There are two different Chicago Styles. The one shown [on the webpage] is for a Reference List which is starting to become the more common one. See the printed manual for the other." - So that suggests yet another nuance that perhaps needs to be taken into account, either via another parameter, or further differentiation of styles into e.g. 'ChicagoRef' and 'ChicagoMan'.

In closing I'd suggest that its a big ask to expect editors on Wikipedia to strictly follow any citation style who's guide isn't freely available online.

--SallyScot (talk) 20:29, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Part of the beauty of using citation templates is to be able to make it easy to have a consistent look throught an article. If the various templates themselves are inconsistent, I think that is a significant problem. I agree with you that if we could add a style parameter to each template, that would be great, as long as each template had that option so that a page would be nicely formatted. If anything, I think that the focus should be on the most-used ones which are, f I am not mistaken, {{cite web}}, {{cite news}}, {{cite journal}}, and the slightly different and multi-functional {{citation}} which has Harvard referencing capabilities. -- Avi (talk) 20:46, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd agree that there's a core of templates, consisting of the ones you listed, I'd include {{cite book}}, and say that of these {{cite news}} is currently the odd one out. I haven't had a problem with it being different so far, but you're right to point it out as an inconsistency. --SallyScot (talk) 22:37, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple ISSNs

The journal Studia Logica has two separate ISSN's one for the print version and one for the online version. What to do about this? 75.62.108.101 (talk) 08:41, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd use neither. That journal uses {{DOI}} tags to identify articles for both online and offline, and unique for each item. For example doi:10.1007/s11225-008-9096-7. If, for example the journal did not have a DOI (or other more advanced system, such as {{PubMed}}), I'd probably use the print issn. +mt 15:21, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

ISSN are only truly necessary (IMHO) if it is impossible to link to a version of the article (helps tracking the periodical), so in your case, I would either go for the online (this is a web encyclopedia, after all), or a doi/url and none. Alternatively, you can put any number of identifiers in the "id" field. Circeus (talk) 16:32, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] bolding volume

why isn't volume bolded anymore? Nergaal (talk) 07:54, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

See three sections up.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:01, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Change position of quotation marks?

I would like to suggest a minor change in the position of the quotation mark around the article title from, for example:

• John Ashburner and Karl J. Friston (June 2000). "Voxel-Based Morphometry—The Methods". NeuroImage 11 (6): 805–821.

to:

• John Ashburner and Karl J. Friston (June 2000). "Voxel-Based Morphometry—The Methods". NeuroImage 11 (6): 805–821.

To me it looks slightly nicer — fnielsen (talk) 22:56, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dual ISSN

I found a number of sources with both an ISSN for a print version and an ISSN for an online version. I asked for help about trying to use both, and found that this template doesn't support it, and it could only be done manually. If possible, it would be helpful if another ISSN could be added. In the case that it cannot, is there a policy as to which one I should use? ~XarBioGeek ^(talk) 17:39, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

See the recent discussion at #Multiple_ISSNs. I agree that having both is of only marginal value & that it is probably slightly more useful to have the print one in preference of the electronic one. --Karnesky (talk) 18:01, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Special character

{{editprotected}} I'm seeing a special character appearing at the end of the template when it is displayed in a reference list. (On my browser it appears as a small rectangle.) Does this have some purpose or is it an error? Thanks.—RJH (talk) 22:28, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Your browser+font might be failing to give the correct unicode symbol. We must have SOME character for COinS to work (see #COinS gone?). --Karnesky (talk) 22:57, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

I have the same problem in IE6, Firefox and Opera. It looks ugly, should be removed. - Darwinek (talk) 10:11, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

(See #COinS gone?) It seems that the zero-width space does not display correctly in IE. Please replace ​ with  

Y Done I hate IE sometimes... I really must get a different browser :D Happy‑melon 17:42, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

It is now OK in my Firefox and Opera but small rectange still appears in IE. :( - Darwinek (talk) 22:08, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps it would be better to use the zero-width non-breaking space (aka BOM), U+FEFF. Spacepotato (talk) 03:50, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

I get a rectangle in Konqueror with my font of choice, too. Please can someone fix this? If the BOM doesn't work, then can we go back to the ordinary non-breaking space? I think an "extra space" after a period is better than an undisplayable blob. Ntsimp (talk) 22:54, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

What if a style attribute was added with "display: none;"? That might work. « D. Trebbien (talk) 06:18 2008 February 28 (UTC)

If this is done, it should be applied to a separate element that is nested within the COinS span so that LibX and other tools that create links through an OpenURL resolver would make links that are visible. So:

<span class="Z3988" title="ctx_ver=Z39.88-2004&....><span style="display: none;">&nbsp;</span></span>

will probably work. --Karnesky (talk) 06:52, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

The square is still there on my IE6. Narayanese (talk) 10:22, 19 March 2008 (UTC) Fixed now, thanks :) Narayanese (talk) 22:48, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

• I also use IE6 (I have to when I work at this console, because I don't own it), and I am also seeing the ending " " square. --M@rēino 13:58, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes. It is slightly annoying. Anything we can do to get this removed/fixed? Mahalo. --Ali'i 13:55, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Y Done I changed it back to an nbsp. Happy‑melon 23:04, 22 March 2008 (UTC)

But then you deleted nbsp in your next edit. Can someone please fix this? --Karnesky (talk) 00:12, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Capital letters for author's name?

How about writing the author's name in capital letters, by using the Template:Smallcaps? I just thought about because somebody did it in the 10th millennium BC article. --Bender235 (talk) 12:45, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] DOILABEL

{{editprotected}} The DOILABEL parameter is not working. Example:

{{cite journal
 | doi = 10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029<0443:APCCAI>2.0.CO;2
 | doilabel = 10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029%3C0443:APCCAI%3E2.0.CO;2
}}

gives

"{{{title}}}" . doi:10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029%3C0443:APCCAI%3E2.0.CO;2. 

To fix, please replace

  |. [[Digital object identifier|doi]]:[http://dx.doi.org/{{{doi|{{{doilabel|}}}}}} {{{doi}}}]

with

  |. [[Digital object identifier|doi]]:[http://dx.doi.org/{{{doilabel|{{{doi|}}}}}} {{{doi}}}]

which will produce

| 10.1130/0091-7613(2001)029<0443:APCCAI>2.0.CO;2 

Thanks. Verisimilus T 19:32, 11 March 2008 (UTC)

Y Done. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:07, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Retrofit topic-year headers

29-March-2008: I have grouped older topics above using headers "Topics from 2007" (etc.) to emphasize age of topics. Older topics might still apply, but using the tactic of yearly headers to note the age helps avoid rehashing old news, without archiving any ongoing issues. Also, new topics are more likely to be added to the bottom, not top. -Wikid77 (talk) 21:56, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Pubmed Central

After correspondence with PubMed Central the site now displays the PMC ID prominently on both PubMed abstracts and the PMC pages themselves. Isn't it time that we integrate the {{PMC}} template with this template, or am I wrong here? JFW | T@lk 11:29, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Ok, but how to structure ? Either as a link after the PMID link, or alternative for linking the paper's title:

1. As PubMed abstracts and PubMed Central reprints are clearly tightly entwined, so should the method of enclosing here be. Until now this generally been added as a comment before the closing </ref> with "{{PMC|67890}}" showing as "Full text at PMC: 67890".
   This is though rather wordy and we do not explain that the linked PMID number is to an abstract webpage. So, do we want "|pmid=12345 |pmc=67890" to show as:
   PMID 12345 PMC 67890
2. However, what if a url link is available to the full article at the original journal's website, do we really need links to both versions of the full article ? Personally I think the original article should be prefered (as being the original, often better integration of figures & tables than at PubMed Central, and may have list of articles citating the paper).
   • So do we code this that if url is defined, then the pmc link is not displayed after the PMID ?
   • OR does a defined pmc get used as the link for the paper's title if url is not otherwise specified - i.e. coded as (dropping the multiple curley brackets for clarity):
     {#if {url} | [{url} {title}] | {#if {pmc} | [http://www.pubmedcentral.gov...={pmc} {title}] } }
     • Finally if the latter option then should the format parameter be prefixed with some indication that this is not the original journal being linked to, eg show "Title (Reprint.)", "Title (PMC reprint.)" or "Title (PMC reprint.)"

Lots of options here I know, but I only really want to try and code this the once :-) David Ruben ^Talk 19:19, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Well zero response to above implementation options, so far :-) Just to reiterate, proposal is to use a "pmc" parameter as link (instead of url if that is not available) for the title. However if url is provided, then just appears as a PMC number after the PMID number. Any objections ? David Ruben ^Talk 20:54, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Fine by me. I, for one, will be glad to see PMC integrated into {{cite journal}} regardless of how the output looks :) Fvasconcellos (t·c) 23:18, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Integrating the PMC into cite journal is certainly a good idea. There has been some opposition to using the DOI to form the title link when no URL parameter is specified (although not from me); using the PMC to form the link seems no different, and could cause problems if the DOI (which is more universal—it's used for essentially all modern journals, not just medical ones) is made to operate this way as well. Either way, I suggest that the formats of the DOI, PMID, and PMC should all be similar, which is not the case now:

• Doe, John (2008). "Made up article". doi:10.0001/0001. PMID 1234. 

ASHill (talk | contribs) 23:50, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Agree that url should take priority, but doi often provides link just to an abstract of an article whereas PMC is always to the full whole article. Therefore I think the doi should not automatically be used by this template as a title link if there is no url specified, whereas using pmc as a title link would definitely be to a whole article (ie title link on url else pmc as lesser option, with no title link as standard for doi value but with it being like the pmid as a separate item at the end of citation).

That as it may be, certainly there now seems a stated consensus to have as a minimum "pmc" as a parameter like DOI & PMID included in some manner, so lets do this step first - we can then continue discussing whether or not to title link as a formating/style issue :-)

Style of displaying can also be played around with as ASHill notes. Currently we have the template showing PMID as per the mediawiki rendering of PMID 123, ie PMID 123 a single linked item rather than say PMID: 123 which is how this template shows the doi value. However I think PMID needs be left how mediawiki currently styles it, whereas we can make pmc behave like doi & issn with the mnemonics separately wikilinked from teh external link of their value, so helping readers who do not know what these are. There is a difference between doi & issn as to whether to separate mnemonic from teh value with a space or a semicolon, but for now i'll add pmc to initially show as PMC:123 David Ruben ^Talk 01:46, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Just to throw another layout style into the ring, PubMed Central itself seems to use no separating punctuation see [2] where "PMCID: PMC23456" style is used - I'll prevote with ASHill not to add ever new formats to this citation template :-) David Ruben ^Talk 01:57, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Amen to not introducing yet another format. The options make my head spin. I would vote to change the formatting of PMIDs in this template to look like PMCs if possible, given MediaWiki consistency. Capitalizing 'DOI' might be a good idea, but only if done in other templates that use it; see Template talk:Cite conference#DOI capitalization.

I should note that I rarely edit medical articles, so I'm not familiar with the practical use of PMIDs and PMCs in these templates, but I am quite familiar with DOIs. I didn't realize that PMCs always link directly to full text; that makes using them to form the link more attractive than DOIs. However, others (not me!) have raised privacy concerns about relying on a third-party server to resolve links to a large number of articles. ASHill (talk | contribs) 02:30, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How to cite quarterlies?

So if I'm referencing a journal with a date of "Winter 2005", how would I put that? Right now I'm setting "month" to "Winter", which seems weird but the only real option that I can see.—Chowbok ☠ 21:10, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

It is what I have always done... David Ruben ^Talk 21:52, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Authorless citations

It's been a few days now, and D. Trebbien's request for edit in #How about giving editors an option?, which would put the date after the title if there is no author, has not been acted on. What is needed to move this proposal forward? For now, I have given up on using "cite journal" to format authorless entries in Autism, and instead have simply fixed by hand the hand-formatted citations so as to embolden the volume numbers and make them consistent again with the reverted behavior of Template:Cite journal. I'll have to do this to some other articles, too, I'm afraid. It would save me some work in the long run if "cite journal" could handle these citations. Eubulides (talk) 22:42, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Y Done I see Happy-melon already made the changes yesterday - thanks David Ruben ^Talk 12:15, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

complaint - please verify that this is not the case, or provide a fix. Thanks, Happy‑melon 22:36, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't see a problem:

*{{cite journal |author=Fred Bloggs |title=Title |journal=Journal |volume=1 |pages=12-23 |year=2008 |month=April}}
*{{cite journal |author= |title=Title |journal=Journal |volume=1 |pages=12-23 |year=2008 |month=April}}

Gives:

• Fred Bloggs (April 2008). "Title". Journal 1: 12-23. 
• "Title" (April 2008). Journal 1: 12-23. 

David Ruben ^Talk 23:18, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I was testing out various combinations on my sandbox page (using Show preview only), but could not duplicate the problem. « D. Trebbien (talk) 23:20 2008 April 6 (UTC)

The only issue I see is if month is present & year is not:

{{cite journal |author=Fred Bloggs |title=Title |journal=Journal |volume=1 |pages=12-23 |month=April}}

• Fred Bloggs. "Title". Journal 1: 12-23. 

--Karnesky (talk) 23:51, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

See also Template_talk:Citation#The_month_is_not_displayed. I think that Adoniscik wasn't using the right template.--Karnesky (talk) 23:53, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] funding parameter (again)

Well, I created {{cite study}} as recommended on Template_talk:Cite_web#adding_funding.3D_parameter, and then I tried to replace the citation, and noticed that it was using "cite journal" instead of "cite web". Sigh *pounds head on keyboard*. So, I can a) reproduce all the funtionality of this template on "cite study" or b) ask here for the addition of funding param to this template and kill "cite study" altogether --Enric Naval (talk) 18:47, 9 April 2008 (UTC) (I'll probably try anyways to expand "cite study", try to give it a link to pubmed, etc) --Enric Naval (talk) 18:49, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think funding information should be added to this very common template, as it doesn't help with locating an article (the chief reason to use this template) & would be used on a small minority of articles. It might make sense to have a "note" or "extra" field on this and other citation templates, as BibTeX and other systems have. These potential fields might have to be checked for compliance to WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. --Karnesky (talk) 21:15, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm talking about confirmed funding like the one on this study here "Acknowledgment. This study was partly funded by Homint." [3], this means that there is no need to make OR to determine the funding, since many will disclose it. A "extra" field could do the trick. Mind you, I could also just go and add the text "funding by xxx" inside the ref tags after the template, of course, and this would have the same problems as an "extra" field. (damn, I just noticed that cite journal already has "pmid" param for pubmed) --Enric Naval (talk) 16:46, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] An example of added usefulness for the template

In this study, it was uaed to compare the use of various journals across citations. Circeus (talk) 03:27, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] DOI and URL?

The documentation says:

Specify the DOI to provide a permanent and direct link to the article from the publisher

{{cite journal |last=Giles |first=Jim |title=Preprint Server Seeks Way to Halt Plagiarists |url=http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v426/n6962/full/426007a.html |journal=Nature |date=6 November 2003 |pages=7 |doi=10.1038/426007a }}

→ Giles, Jim (6 November 2003). "Preprint Server Seeks Way to Halt Plagiarists". Nature: 7. doi:10.1038/426007a. 

But why should we add both DOI and URL, since DOI is essentially a permanent URL? --Bender235 (talk) 18:08, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Because the Doi is not necessarily a link to a freely accessible version of the article. In such cases URLs are often used to link to a personal or institutional archive copy of the paper. Otherwise, it is indeed pretty pointless. URLs can also be used alongside a PMID (e.g. to a freely accessible journal where the PMID only has the abstract, and no DOI exists). Circeus (talk) 18:25, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

You're definitely right, if there's a freely accessible version of a paper we should use URL additionally to DOI. But in that case above, with that Nature article? We should probably change the example in the documentation. --Bender235 (talk) 22:11, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I suspect the example was intended to show that the DOI resolves to the same url, but that information should be separate fro the example. Circeus (talk) 22:48, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Agreed, a URL is only useful in addition to a DOI if a) it is not the same as you get when you follow a DOI; b) it is free to access. Smith609 Talk 15:40, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

But if there is a DOI, and no URL, then the title of the article should link to the DOI. This is for the benefit of the user. It's intuitively clear what clicking on a hypertext title means. Most readers will not know what a DOI is (I work for a high tech company, and this is my experience anyway. Random readers are probably even less likely to know.) Furthermore, the doi "looks" random, and users are taught to be wary about clicking on random looking links (these are often phishing or spam tracking links). So I'd say if there is a URL, link the title to that; if not and there is a DOI, then link the title to "dx.doi.org/DOI". This would IMO be in the best interest of the readers. LouScheffer (talk) 21:35, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree that that should be the behavior (and that's what the editprotected request below is asking for). ASHill (talk) 21:45, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

No, the request below says "if no title is supplied". This should be the behaviour even if a title is supplied, I think. LouScheffer (talk) 21:49, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ease of use update

Hi,

I've just configured my DOI bot so it can automatically complete reference data from nothing more than a DOI.

To make it as simple as possible to add references to articles, could you please replace the source with the contents of Template:Cite journal/Edit?

This amendment has the following action:

• IF no title parameter is supplied, BUT a DOI is,

• THEN provide a link, in place of {{{title}}}, to a URL that will make DOI bot fill out the reference from the DOI.

Thanks,

Smith609 Talk 15:40, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Title to link to DOI in absence of URL parameter

• A further update, as requested on my talk page: Please replace

{{{url}}}

with:

{{{url|{{#if:{{{doi|}}}|http://dx.doi.org/{{{doi}}}}}|{{#if:{{{pmid|}}}|http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids={{{pmid}}}&dopt=Abstract}}}}}

This will make the title wikilinked with a DOI, or PMID, if either parameter exists.

Thanks, Smith609 Talk 22:16, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Clarification

Request one would allow editors to create a citation by simply pasing "cite journal | doi = 10.1092/whatever" into the article. The citation would then appear with a link to DOI bot, which would then dutifully pad out the citation with the article's title, author, journal etc.

Request two would wikilink the title with:

• If it exists, the URL parameter supplied
• If there's no URL parameter, the DOI destination
• If there's neither of these, the PMID destination

This is in addition to the DOI and PMID links appearing at the end of the citation.

Sorry not to be clearer in the first instance!

Smith609 Talk 22:37, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

No please do not enact this suggestion, for multiple reasons:

• PMID is always to just an abstract and DOI usually so, whereas the implication is that url is used only to link to a copy of the full article.
• To create a linked title to an abstract would hide that there might be a freely accessable online access to the whole paper that could be added as the url.
• PMID gives more than just an abstract, but also allows searching on authors other papers, related topics and what other papers have cited the paper subsequently. The PMID link is therefore useful even if title is linked to full copy by the url parameter
• Also would be silly to have title linked to DOI and then also at the end of the template show the DOI value, eg Smith A Example paper BMJ 123:10; 12-4 doi:123 duplicates the same link
  Likewise for the PMID link.
• Finally what bot is going to go through correcting "cite journal | doi = 10.1092/whatever" or "cite journal | pmid= 123456/whatever" ? That's what Diberri's tool is for surely ? David Ruben ^Talk 22:41, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your input! Just to clarify, this suggestion would not remove the PMID or DOI links from the end of the citation. It was suggested that the duplicated link be added above, and on my talk page - I'm remaining neutral on that subject for now! The bot that's causing all the fuss is User:DOI bot, and Diberri's tool is very limited in its scope - it did a poor job on a couple of articles I tested, and doesn't provide scope for DOIs. Also, I'd never heard of it before!! Smith609 Talk 22:51, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Diberri's tool does give doi's where known to PubMed, eg see this random example. David Ruben ^Talk 22:58, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Oops you mentioned your DOI bot above (but still I'd rather know if I'm going for an abstract or a carefully located full article link), but there is no equivalent for PMID. David Ruben ^Talk 22:48, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

PMIDs are never touched by the bot. And in my experience (alas), the URL parameter has very rarely been selected to point to a full article page! I guess the needs of medics and scientists are probably quite different. Smith609 Talk 22:53, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Hmmmm sad if url so rarely used to a full version then. What happens in such citations, is the format parameter used to specify "abstract" then ? David Ruben ^Talk 22:58, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

... and if not then should that be a direction in the documentation on using this template ? David Ruben ^Talk 23:00, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

The format parameter is very rarely used at all, in my experience! I think that people are probably more prone to copy existing templates than to check the documentation. I am trying to work out whether I could adapt the bot to detect the appropriate "format" automatically - it may not be too difficult. Smith609 Talk 07:52, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

In astronomy articles at least, the url parameter often (though not always) points to the Astrophysics Data System entry for the article. Although that doesn't contain the full text of the article, it contains useful links and metadata, including different places where the full text is available (such as the arXiv). The id={{template:arXiv}} template is often used in the cite template to point to the arXiv entry as well. The lesson, I think, is not to make generalizations about the use of the template across fields, as it appears to me that the convention of using the URL parameter to point to a freely available, full text version of the article is common in medical articles (which I rarely edit). In general, if the url is specified, it really ought to point to the version that the editor used to get the information in the wikipedia article—sometimes, the abstract is enough as it does contain the cited information.

Using the format parameter might be a good indicator. However, I have two concerns. 1) Is that a proper use of the format field? 2) Saying 'abstract' for a doi varies depending on where you're accessing the internet; if you're at a library with access to the journal, the doi link is usually full text.

A doi link can at least be read in full if you go to a library or university with a subscription or site license to the journal. ASHill (talk) 14:52, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

• Additional thought http://pmid.us/ is not the true link for PubMed which gets redirected, see {{PMID}} which gives a fuller url address and parameters.David Ruben ^Talk 22:58, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Y Done: I've amended the URL to the one used at {{PMID}}. Smith609 Talk 07:46, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the primary consideration should be what's best for the typical/casual user. By far the most natural place to click to get more information is the title (and DOI links, with their odd syntax, are the worst). If the full paper is available, that's best, but if not they'd presumably like to read at least the abstract. In the case where the full paper is available on-line for free, then the following works: the convention is that URL is only used when it points to a full paper, and the title links to URL, then DOI if no URL, then PMID if no URL or DOI, then does what the user wants - it points to the best known publicly available material. Nothing then prevents an editor who finds a full version on-line from adding a URL link to make it available, but until that point at least the reader can see the abstract.

The case is much less clear when the full-text version is only available on a pay-to-access site. Ideally what the user would like is a link to the full paper if they have access, otherwise only the abstract. The best way to do this would be to have the for-fee web sites default to the abstract if the user is not allowed full article access, but clearly we cannot count on this. Another might be to add another ID, such as 'pay-url='. Then the link could appear, but with a '$' symbol, and the abstract could be a separate link. Any other ideas?? LouScheffer (talk) 23:24, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

(Umm, $-symbol isn't entirely international. Subscription Required, Payment Required or Pay might be better.)

I've been going through "my" articles (the watched ones) and adding

• format= Abstract
• format= PDF: Full text
• format= HTML: Full text

as appropriate. I do wish everyone would do this. Perhaps to add as a suggestion in the instructions?

I prefer linked title for "ordinary" users. People at universities will know at a glance if DOI will give them full text. --Hordaland (talk) 23:07, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Solution

Okay, I think I've got it. What if:

• If the template uses a DOI or PMID to link the title, and no format parameter is specified, it sets the format to display "DOI link" or something similar?

I think that solves all the qualms. Any problems with that implementation? Smith609 Talk 08:03, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I like this implementation (assuming it will use the URL field for the title link if the URL field is provided). ASHill (talk) 14:55, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

It will do. As there haven't been any other issues with this, I'll request the edit. Smith609 Talk 07:57, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand. If the url param specifies something like http://dx.doi.org/10.000/123p423, then it will display Synthesis and characterization of thingamajig (DOI link) (...) doi:10.000/123p423? So, you have effectively two hyperlinks with the same target in one line? If that's the case, I would rather your bot or anyone else simply not specify the URL at all, and add format = free/open access.

I would also think it is irresponsible to cite something off the abstract of a paper without having read it in full. There could be important caveats or exceptions listed in the full text.--Rifleman 82 (talk) 08:29, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Certainly true usually, but sometimes for a very broad point that's common knowledge in the field, an abstract is OK to verify the point on Wikipedia. More importantly, if the writer of the Wikipedia point had access to the full article, an abstract is often enough for another reader to verify the citation, and as Smith says, an abstract link is surely better than nothing.

I personally would favor eliminating the displayed DOI in favor of having the title alone link to the DOI when no URL parameter is specified. However, there was a consensus against that when I proposed it here a few months ago. I'm agnostic on whether the title should link to the DOI if the DOI is specified and displayed; I just think having the URL parameter explicitly set to link to the same page as the DOI is silly, redundant, and prone to breaking. ASHill (talk | contribs) 15:00, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Yes, there would be two hyperlinks; the advantage to having the title hyperlinked is that it is intuitive for readers to click on the title to view the article, but not so obvious what the DOI link means. I agree that it doesn't seem entirely necessary, but a lot of people seem to feel quite strongly that it is useful, and I see no point in denying them their request on personal/aesthetic grounds - it seems there's a deal of agreement on my talk page that the title should link to something.

I'm not sure where your second point comes in; a DOI link is not necessarily free or open access; I agree that the full text should always be read before citing a source, but sometimes only abstracts are available online / for free, and a link to the abstract of a paper is much more useful than no link at all. Smith609 Talk 11:47, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

{{editprotected}}

{{{url}}}

}}{{#if:{{{format|}}}
  |  ({{{format}}})

{{{url|{{#if:{{{doi|}}}
  |http://dx.doi.org/{{{doi}}}
  |{{#if:{{{pmid|}}}|http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=retrieve&db=pubmed&list_uids={{{pmid}}}&dopt=Abstract}}
}}}}}

}}{{#if:{{{format|{{#ifeq:{{{url|{{{doi|{{{pmid}}}}}}}}}|{{{doi|{{{pmid}}}}}}|has no URL but a DOI or PMID|}}}}}
  |  ({{{format|{{#if:{{{doi|}}}|DOI link|PMID link}}}}})

Y Done You removed a URL-encoded space that I suspect was there for a reason, so I re-added it: if it was genuinely unnecessary, just say the word and I'll take it out. Happy‑melon 19:08, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Hmm; this has added the (DOI link), but did not make the title a DOI link. e. g.

• J. Jeff Hester (2004). "The Cradle of the Solar System" (DOI link). Science. doi:10.1126/science.1096808. 

It also incorrectly says (PMID link) when none of the url, DOI, or PMID parameters are included:

• J. Jeff Hester (2004). "The Cradle of the Solar System" (PMID link). Science. 

ASHill (talk | contribs) 19:17, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Reverted, until you work out what's gone wrong and how to fix it. Happy‑melon 19:22, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Given the recent concern raised at WP:AN#DOI bot blocked for policy reconsideration, I think we should hold off on making this change (properly implemented) pending the outcome of that policy discussion. ASHill (talk | contribs) 21:23, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I've now corrected the code - I misplaced a brace. Smith609 Talk 07:54, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Format parameter

As links now automatically display whether they point to a PDF, is the "format=PDF" necessary? My sense from recent discussion is that people would find it more useful if they knew where the link was pointing: for example, to an abstract, a freely available full text, and so on. I won't amend the doc page here until I'm sure there's consensus! Smith609 Talk 09:48, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I agree that format=PDF does not help much (if at all - if there was a PDF format file without the .pdf extension, I don't think the browser would know what to do with it anyway). I also agree that it would be an excellent idea to know what the link points to (pay article, free article, abstract, etc.), and display these differently (as some web sites add $$$ to links that point to pay pages - I think yahoo financial news used to do this). I'd vote for making a new parameter, though, and not re-using 'format=', since 'format' is not very intuitive for this use. LouScheffer (talk) 13:54, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay. We could easily retain backwards compatibility too until a bot corrects them all. Any suggestions for an intuitive parameter name? Smith609 Talk 14:54, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

The documentation for Template:cite news explicitly suggests using the format parameter for identifying 'fee required' links, so maybe format is the right parameter to use. ASHill (talk) 15:00, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

They are doing this because it does what they want, not because it's the right thing to do, IMO. They are using 'format' as 'string-to-appear-after-link'. There is nothing wrong with the function, but it's not intuitive to overload a parameter this way, and it will take new editors longer to figure out how this works. (For example, I've been an editor for several years and was unaware of this use of format until you told me.) Also, if you do it this way it will appear differently in different articles. Since there are really two issues - what type of thing the link points to, and whether it requires payment, I'd actually prefer two fields, each with a more descriptive name. Perhaps 'url_type={abstract, paper, pre-print}' and 'cost={free, fee required}', or something similar, with defaults of 'paper' and 'free'.

There is also the case (commonly in physics) where the article is pay, but the pre-print is free (from arXiv, typically}. The way I handle this now is <ref>{{cite journal |url= |doi=...} Pre-print [http://arXiv.org/... here].</ref> but it would be nice if there was a standardized way of doing this as well. However this requires 2 URLs. LouScheffer (talk) 15:50, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps the thing to do is to replace the "url" parameter with something along the lines of "free-url" and "fulltext-url"? Smith609 Talk 16:12, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

As long as the url parameter still works for backwards compatibility and simplicity, of course. However, that only works if a URL is being provided, which isn't necessary when using doi, arXiv, and PMID. ASHill (talk) 16:59, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough; I wasn't aware of that usage either until I looked while composing the above comment. (Meta-comment: The variety of cite templates, each with their own quirks, are a huge mess!)

I agree that format= isn't intuitive; url_type sounds good. However, saying 'abstract' is difficult (as I mentioned above) as, for DOIs, it varies based on whether you're at a library or university with a site license to the journal. Using url_type=ADS for NASA ADS entries would also be a good use of that field, for example. I like the cost= proposal very much, except that a doi link does provide useful information (the abstract) even if you can't read the whole article for free. —This is part of a comment by Ashill (of 16:23, 2 May 2008 (UTC)), which was interrupted by the following:

If no URL was specified (but a DOI was), url_type could default to "DOI"? I think a DOI always links to the same page anyway - but you may get a "no entry" page if you don't have access. Smith609 Talk 18:05, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

For every journal I know, you at least get the abstract from a DOI. That default would be fine by me, although I'm concerned that this proposal will make references rather crowded. ASHill (talk) 22:23, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

This is my experience as well. I don't know any sites that charge for abstracts, or block access if you have not paid. (Of course if anyone knows differently, please speak up!) I think we can count on a DOI link to give at least the abstract. LouScheffer (talk) 22:33, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, for arXiv preprints, using {{cite journal | author,title,etc | id={{arXiv|0805.0001}} }} is a nice way to produce consistent output, and won't require fixing links if the arXiv decides to change their URL format. ASHill (talk) 16:23, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] full stop 'n spacing

{{editprotected}} i may be wrong about this, but i'm pretty sure there should be a 'full stop' (period) rendered between the {{{jounal}}} and {{{volume}}} variables. also, the spacing appears to be wrong.

Last, first (1977). "Title". The Journal of Stuff 5 (2): 22-23. The Publishers of Stuff. 

Current rendering:

...."Title". The Journal of Stuff5 (2):22-23. The Publishers....

Correct rendering:

...."Title". The Journal of Stuff. 5(2):22-23. The Publishers....

--emerson7 00:05, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

N Not done, the spacing looks okay in all of my tests on Firefox and IE; if you give me the code for an example that doesn't work I'll take a look again and try to fix it. Also, I did a quick look at APA and MLA styles for journal citations, and neither uses a full stop (though this form doesn't seem to fit either style perfectly). MLA uses nothing and APA uses a comma, so I'm just going to leave it alone for now until we see some consensus to change it. --CapitalR (talk) 17:53, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] DOI capitalization

I left a note at Template talk:Cite conference regarding inconsistent DOI formatting between the two templates; comment there if interested. ASHill (talk | contribs) 16:31, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Microformats?

Could we implement any type of microformat to "allow information intended for end-users to also be automatically processed by software?" You know, the approach to a semantic web, Web 3.0, ... ––Bender235 (talk) 10:37, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

We already do - check the talk page archives or template source code for more information. Smith609 Talk 11:58, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Really? Besides of <cite>…</cite> I can't see no microformat. Where is it? —Bender235 (talk) 22:47, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

There is no agreed-upon "true" microformat for citations. hCite is being developed, but very slowly & there's almost no adoption. WP citation templates use COinS, which are more separated from the displayed text than so-called "true microformats," but are machine-readable (try out Zotero and/or LibX). --Karnesky (talk) 00:18, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay, so I guess we wait until there's something like hCite. —Bender235 (talk) 08:58, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

BTW: I've just spotted Wikipedia:WikiProject Microformats#Citations. Explains everything. —Bender235 (talk) 10:30, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] new #urlencode parserfunction and doilabel parameter

{{editprotected}}

Please replace {{{doi|{{{doilabel|}}}}}} with {{urlencode:{{doi}}}}}.

This renders the doilabel parameter obsolete, allowing the template to generate a URL-friendly DOI itself.

Smith609 Talk 12:57, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Y Done, -CapitalR (talk) 13:18, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

This function doesn't quite work for DOIs containing square brackets. In solving one problem, it's exposed another. There are four solutions:

1. We simply undo the edit, returning tot he bad old days of having to specify DOI labels, and having lots of broken links where editors don't realise this;
2. We don't link the text of the DOI, but instead provide an invisible link after it. example: doi:10.1082/asduy39871 
3. Alternatively, if a DOI is specified, but a URL is not, we link the title to the DOI; if a URL is specified then we would have to either not display the DOI link, or have the "invisible" link in 2.
4. Or, we put up with working links which look messy, like this one: doi:10.1012/example[squarebrackets]

Which is preferable? Smith609 Talk 18:36, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

It turns out that these DOIs didn't work, even in the days of doilabels. I've implemented a fix at {{doi}} which will do the job here for now, at least until anyone comes up with a more elegant solution!

{{editprotected}}

Replace:

[[Digital object identifier|doi]]:[http://dx.doi.org/{{urlencode:{{{doi}}}}} {{{doi}}}]

With:

[[Digital object identifier|doi]]:{{#ifeq:{{doi/encode|{{{doi}}}}}|{{{doi}}}|[http://dx.doi.org/{{urlencode:{{{doi}}}}} {{{doi}}}]|{{{doi}}}[http://dx.doi.org/{{urlencode:{{{doi}}}}}  ]}}

Result:

Most "normal" dois remain the same:

doi:10.1234/nature/ajk3/12038

Dois with square brackets gain a "postlink":

Before: doi:10.1010/test[squarebrackets]

After: doi:10.1010/test[square]brackets 

Thanks, Smith609 Talk 10:24, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Y Done, please double check that the new code is correct. I think you intended for an "nbsp;" to be in place of one of the spaces so I made that change; let me know if that wasn't what you intended. --CapitalR (talk) 10:48, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Argh, the hazards of copying and pasting. Didn't realise the nbsp didn't show up in the pre code. I also forgot to replace {{{1|{{{id}}}}}} with {{{doi}}} in the "new" code. I've corrected it above, would you mind amending to the new version, as it renders abover? Thanks. Smith609 Talk 11:22, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay, should be all set now. Let me know if there's anything else. --CapitalR (talk) 11:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

This doi doesn't have a square bracket and yet shows up with a postlink. Why? Is this avoidable? ASHill (talk | contribs) 15:59, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

• M. J. Fogg. "Long title". doi:10.1051/0004-6361:20066171. 

It's the colon that does it - unfortunately, wikipedia's parser functions are not really designed for text manipulation, so any DOIs containing special characters (except slashes and dashes) will display with a postlink. I can't think of any way around this, unfortunately! Smith609 Talk 16:12, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand why people apparently believe these "post-links" are acceptable. They're inaccessible to the reader. This issue is not limited to "square brackets" as claimed above. Parentheses cause the same issue:

{{cite journal|first=R.|last=Lahana|title=How many leads from HTS?|journal=Drug Discovery Today|year=1999|issue=4|pages=447-448|doi=10.1016/S1359-6446(99)01393-8}}

produces:

Lahana, R. (1999). "How many leads from HTS?". Drug Discovery Today (4): 447-448. doi:10.1016/S1359-6446(99)01393-8. 

--Superm401 - Talk 00:08, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

This should be corrected by changing:

{{#if:{{{doi|}}} |. [[Digital object identifier|doi]]:{{#ifeq:{{doi/encode|{{{doi}}}}}|{{{doi}}}|[http://dx.doi.org/{{urlencode:{{{doi}}}}} {{{doi}}}]|{{{doi}}}[http://dx.doi.org/{{urlencode:{{{doi}}}}}  ]}}

to:

{{#if:{{{doi|}}} |. [[Digital object identifier|doi]]:{{#ifeq:{{doi/encode|{{{doi}}}}}|{{{doi}}}|[http://dx.doi.org/{{urlencode:{{{doi}}}}} {{{doi}}}]|[http://dx.doi.org/{{urlencode:{{{doi}}}}} {{urlencode:{{{doi}}}}}]}}

Of course, the display of the doi is still not correct. However, it is usable, which post-links are not. Superm401 - Talk 00:48, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

I find it possible to use postlinks by clicking on the link icon. Does this not work for you? A possible workaround would be to instead postlink a very small word "go" after the DOI, thus: doi:10.1039/te[eph]1298.as/aw34 go

The alternative solution is percent-encode the characters <>[] when they appear in a DOI, and remove the postlink code. A bot could update existing DOIs. Then all DOIs would work in the conventional style. Smith609 Talk 13:48, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

That's ugly; it means you can't copy and paste the doi from the paper you're citing or a BibTeX file, and typing character symbols is a good way to introduce human error. Couldn't the template do that encoding automatically, on the fly? ASHill (talk | contribs) 13:58, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Alas, there's no way for the template to do it. I think the best solution would be to encourage editors to enter links manually, and for DOI bot to keep watch for non-encoded DOIs (which would still work, the link would just look ugly) and replace them with the percend-encoded versions as soon as it notices them. Smith609 Talk 14:11, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

OK. I guess that is a job for DOI bot. (Should that be explicitly added to the request for approval while it's still open, or does that fit within "The bot may fix a syntactically broken DOI or PMID reference"? ASHill (talk | contribs) 15:39, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

No harm in noting it, I guess. A shame it has to be done by bot, but I suspect the MediaWiki software will be upgraded at some point in the future... Smith609 Talk 19:01, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Confusion with DOIs containing parentheses

An editor recently complained that DOIs with parentheses were not working. I tried it and also thought they were not working, because they were displayed as black. I didn't notice the tiny hyperlink after them, and I suspect most readers won't notice them either.

Why are parentheses troublesome in DOIs? I can see some other characters being troublesome (e.g., <) but I don't see why parentheses are troublesome.

If this can't be fixed in the template, what can an editor do to work around the problem? Use doilabel=, perhaps? It's pretty confusing as it stands. Eubulides (talk) 21:57, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

See the discussion above this post. A bot is almost ready to get to work percent-encoding the parameters so that all DOIs can be rendered correctly by the template; there didn't seem to be any feeling either way about putting a mini "go" link after character-including DOIs, but that could be employed for the moment if you think it a good idea. Smith609 Talk 07:49, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

{{editprotected}} Now that the DOI bot is back at large, formatting DOI parameters so they display in the old syntax, the above edit can be undone.

While you're making an edit (to reduce server load, edits should be performed at the same time if possible) the change listed below will do the following:

• If a citation is left without a title (the one mandatory parameter)
• And the citation has a a DOI or URL parameter specified

• Then instead of displaying {{{title}}} in place of the missing title parameter, the citation will display a clickable link that will bring the page to a bot's attention; when this link is clicked, the bot will complete the missing information.

Replace:

{{{title}}}

With:

{{{title|{{#if:{{{doi|{{{url|}}}}}}|<span class=error>Citation is missing a {{{title}}}.
Either specify one, or [http://tools.wikimedia.de/~verisimilus/Bot/DOI_bot/doibot.php?edit=on&user=Cite_journal&page={{FULLPAGENAMEE}} click here]
and a bot will complete the citation details for you.}}}}}</span>

Note: The double E in FULLPAGENAMEE is not a typo! It URL-encodes the page name.

Thanks a lot!

Smith609 Talk 17:46, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Addendum: Another change that needs making is to place the DOI link in a neverexpand tag, as it looks incredibly messy in print view. So instead of undoing the first edit, please:

Replace

{{#ifeq:{{doi/encode|{{{doi}}}}}|{{{doi}}}|[http://dx.doi.org/{{urlencode:{{{doi}}}}} {{{doi}}}]|{{{doi}}}[http://dx.doi.org/{{{doi}}}  ]

With

<span class="neverexpand">[http://dx.doi.org/{{urlencode:{{{doi}}}}} {{{doilabel|doi}}}}}}]</span>

Cheers,

Smith609 Talk 10:34, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Hm. A couple of users have pointed out that even with the above edit, a doilabel or postlink will still be required. As the post link didn't please everyone and a bot can add a doilabel, I'll opt for that alternative, and have updated the code above accordingly. Smith609 Talk 16:11, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Editprotected clarification

I thought I'd post a clarification as the above has become a little confusing. Please: {{Editprotected}}

Replace

{{{title}}}

With

{{{title|{{#if:{{{doi|{{{url|}}}}}}|<span class=error>Citation is missing a {{{title}}}.
Either specify one, or [http://tools.wikimedia.de/~verisimilus/Bot/DOI_bot/doibot.php?edit=on&user=Cite_journal&page={{FULLPAGENAMEE}} click here]
and a bot will complete the citation details for you.}}}}}</span>

Note: The double E in FULLPAGENAMEE is not a typo! It URL-encodes the page name.

Replace

{{#ifeq:{{doi/encode|{{{doi}}}}}|{{{doi}}}|[http://dx.doi.org/{{urlencode:{{{doi}}}}} {{{doi}}}]|{{{doi}}}[http://dx.doi.org/{{{doi}}}  ]

With

<span class="neverexpand">[http://dx.doi.org/{{urlencode:{{{doi}}}}} {{{doilabel|{{{doi}}}}}}]</span>

N Not done for now. The first change will result in an empty string being legitimately output as the title when no url or doi is specified, instead of an obvious error. There's a brace imbalance in the second change - is this intentional? Happy‑melon 10:40, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Fixed the brace imbalance. Those things have a habit of disappearing, no matter how carefully you check...

To address the "blank title is absent" issue, the below code would display an error on an empty string:

{{#ifeq:{{{title|}}}||{{#if:{{{doi|{{{url|}}}}}}|<span class=error>Citation is missing a {{{title}}}.
Either specify one, or [http://tools.wikimedia.de/~verisimilus/Bot/DOI_bot/doibot.php?edit=on&user=Cite_journal&page={{FULLPAGENAMEE}} click here]
and a bot will complete the citation details for you.|{{{title}}}}}|{{{title}}}}}</span>

Like any good workman, I'm blaming Notepad++ if these braces don't balance!

Thanks for looking over these edits. Smith609 Talk 19:52, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Y Done There is still a brace imbalance in that second change, but I think I worked out what you're trying to change :D. I hacked the second change around a bit to avoid redundancy (it was checking for a |url= parameter when the code would only be executed if such a parameter was defined). Any problems, revert and let me know. Happy‑melon 19:20, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Retrieval dates for online versions of old printed sources, again

Please contribute to this discussion at Citing sources: Wikipedia talk:Citing sources#Retrieval dates for online versions of old printed sources, again --EnOreg (talk) 16:18, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Consensus: We have a consensus that access dates for online copies of offline sources, while helpful as a comment in the source, should be hidden from the reader. Could somebody who is competent to adapt the citation templates please do so? The idea is to keep the access date as a template parameter but remove the code that displays it. Thanks, --EnOreg (talk) 09:21, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Seems to be fixed now. Please check and let me know if there are any problems. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 15:32, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

That works. Many thanks! I've updated the template documentation. --EnOreg (talk) 16:06, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion for improvement for new pmc= parameter

I tried using the new pmc= parameter on Autism and had a problem, from which I derived a suggestion for improvement.

I like the citation style where the article's title is linked if the article's body is freely readable, and otherwise the title is not linked (readers can follow the DOI or PMID instead). This makes it easier for the reader to tell when the article is free. Assuming this style, please consider this citation currently in Autism (I've followed it by its source code):

• Volkmar FR, Chawarska K (2008). "Autism in infants: an update". World Psychiatry 7 (1): 19–21. PMID 18458791. 
• {{cite journal |journal= World Psychiatry |date=2008 |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=19–21 |title= Autism in infants: an update |author= Volkmar FR, Chawarska K |pmid=18458791 |url=http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2366821}}

If I add pmc= I'll get this:

• Volkmar FR, Chawarska K (2008). "Autism in infants: an update". World Psychiatry 7 (1): 19–21. PMID 18458791. PMC:2366821. 
• {{cite journal |journal= World Psychiatry |date=2008 |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=19–21 |title= Autism in infants: an update |author= Volkmar FR, Chawarska K |pmc=2366821 |pmid=18458791 |url=http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2366821}}

But this is awkward for two reasons. First, the reader has two links to the same web resource, one from the title "Autism in infants: an update", and one from "PMC:2366821"; this is confusing. Second, the editor has to enter "2366821" twice. I can avoid these two awkwardnesses by omitting the url=, as follows:

• Volkmar FR, Chawarska K (2008). "Autism in infants: an update". World Psychiatry 7 (1): 19–21. PMID 18458791. 
• {{cite journal |journal= World Psychiatry |date=2008 |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=19–21 |title= Autism in infants: an update |author= Volkmar FR, Chawarska K |pmc=2366821 |pmid=18458791}}

but this departs from the preferred style as mentioned above, where the title is linked if the article's body is freely readable.

Here is a suggestion for improvement. Can you please alter Template:Cite journal so that if pmc= and title= are specified but url= is not, the template applies the link to the article title rather than outputting text of the form "PMC:2366821"? That way, I'd get the following behavior:

• Volkmar FR, Chawarska K (2008). "Autism in infants: an update". World Psychiatry 7 (1): 19–21. PMID 18458791. 
• {{cite journal |journal= World Psychiatry |date=2008 |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=19–21 |title= Autism in infants: an update |author= Volkmar FR, Chawarska K |pmc=2366821 |pmid=18458791}}

This is easier for the editor, as there's no URL in the source. Also, it's easier for the reader: the output is more compact and easier to read, it doesn't have two links to the same location, and it follows common conventions for freely-readable sources.

Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 21:24, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Agree (see also above Template talk:Cite journal#Pubmed Central).

I'll mention, and immediately vote-down an extra possibility for hiding the pmc at the end of the citation: if both the url & pmc are specified, then there are two links to free full text versions of the article (one the url-linked title, the other the pmc value at the end) - one could in this circumstance hide the end pmc? However this gets overly complicated very quickly and we have no problem having a url-linked title and later a doi value that may link to a free-full text verion.

In my original series of proposals I also asked if the format parameter should be part-filled when the title is linked to the pmc (ie where the link is not to the primary source of the journal itself but to an offsite repository of PubMed Central). I can now show how that might work:

{{cite journal |journal= World Psychiatry |date=2008 |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=19–21 |title= Autism in infants: an update |author= Volkmar FR, Chawarska K |pmc=2366821 |pmid=18458791}}

→Volkmar FR, Chawarska K (2008). "Autism in infants: an update" (PMC copy). World Psychiatry 7 (1): 19–21. PMID 18458791. 

This would still allow an editor to use the format parameter itself:

{{cite journal |journal= World Psychiatry |date=2008 |volume=7 |issue=1 |pages=19–21 |title= Autism in infants: an update |author= Volkmar FR, Chawarska K |pmc=2366821 |pmid=18458791 |format=PDF}}

→Volkmar FR, Chawarska K (2008). "Autism in infants: an update" (PDF PMC copy). World Psychiatry 7 (1): 19–21. PMID 18458791. 

David Ruben ^Talk 23:29, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Re the last proposal, I'd rather not see the string "(PMC copy)". The reader won't care whether the title links to a PMC copy or to some other copy, and it's better to not waste so much valuable screen real estate on an irrelevant detail. Eubulides (talk) 06:36, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I usually include "free full text" when necessary in the "format" parameter. How about that? --Rifleman 82 (talk) 10:19, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

That is a reasonable style for some articles, but it's not the compact medical style I prefer, as it clutters up the screen. Please see Autism#References for the sort of thing I'm dealing with: it has over 130 citations and they consume several screenfuls on most browsers. I'd rather highlight the freely-readable titles (which is easier to see, and consumes no extra screen real estate) than add more text to an already-overstuffed screen. Template:Cite journal should work well with the style used in Autism, and changing the pmc= parameter as suggested would go further toward that goal; currently Autism is not using pmc= because of the abovementioned problems. Eubulides (talk) 17:57, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

So is this a consensus for linking the title to the full free-text of PMC provided that the url has not been specified, making no special comment in format parameter, and then hiding the PMC:xxxx at the end so as not to duplicate displayed links (PMC:xxxx only shown therefore if the title has been linked with a specified url) ? This will be easy for me to code :-) David Ruben ^Talk 18:16, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that's what I'm asking for. I'm glad it's easy to code. I don't know about "consensus" but I don't hear any dissents either. Eubulides (talk) 01:32, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

PS Diberri just allowed pmc value itself to be used by his Wikipedia template filling tool, see example :-) David Ruben ^Talk 22:40, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Y Done <undent> Ok title linked by pmc if url not specified, in which case PMC not then stated at end of the citation (as would a duplication of the link).

Hover mouse over the linked title of "test" to see if to setting url=example.com or pmc=123456

1. "test" .  - links to url, pmc blank
2. "test" . PMC:123456.  - links to url, so pmc listed separately
3. "test" .  - links to pmc, url is blank
4. "test" .  - links to pmc, url empty
5. "test" .  - links to url, pmc empty
6. "test" .  - no link as url & pmc blank
7. "test" . - no link as url & pmc empty

David Ruben ^Talk 03:53, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Here is a full example

{{cite journal |author=Dworkin J, Losick R |title=Does RNA polymerase help drive chromosome segregation in bacteria? |journal=Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. |volume=99 |issue=22 |pages=14089–94 |year=2002 |month=October |pmid=12384568 |pmc=137841 |doi=10.1073/pnas.182539899 |url=}}

Dworkin J, Losick R (October 2002). "Does RNA polymerase help drive chromosome segregation in bacteria?". Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 99 (22): 14089–94. doi:10.1073/pnas.182539899. PMID 12384568. 

Let me know if any problems David Ruben ^Talk 03:57, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] pmc changes

apparently the last changes have broken the template's accessdate field.

Arthur Writer (1 January 2000). "Naming names". The Journal of Journals 30 (3).  ← ???

--emerson7 00:13, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

No not the last change of linking title to pmc parameter (see edit history), but instead accessdate coding was commented out (<!-- -->) by preceeding edits of Rifleman 82 with edit summary "comment out accessdate per talk" as per preceeding request thread of Template talk:Cite journal#Retrieval dates for online versions of old printed sources, again David Ruben ^Talk 01:22, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Request for doi_broken parameter

This change by the DOI bot to Philitas of Cos added two DOIs, but the first one (to doi:10.1093/cq/46.1.308 from a Classical Quarterly citation) does not work, because the broken DOI resolves to a domain name (cq.oupjournals.org) that no longer exists. CHANGES TO OXFORD JOURNALS reports that The Classical Quarterly transferred to a different publisher, and I guess the new publisher no longer supports the old DOIs.

DOIs are supposed to be stable and I suppose they are worth documenting, but as this example shows, they do not always work as a link. For Philitas of Cos I temporarily worked around the problem with this hack, which comments out the DOI and disables the DOI bot for the entire article (so that it doesn't re-add the broken DOI later). But this is overkill: I want the DOI bot to work in general and I don't mind if the DOI displays; I just don't want the DOI to display as a link that can be followed (because the link won't work).

I asked about this on User:DOI bot/bugs #Deny DOI bot on a particular citation and the suggestion there was to add a new parameter to Template:Cite journal. Here's a specific suggestion. Let us call this new argument "doi_broken". Here is an example use: "|doi_broken= old DOI not supported by current publisher". This causes the DOI to not display as an active link, and it appends a remark (with contents taken from the argument of doi_broken) to tell the reader that the DOI does not work. Eubulides (talk) 16:49, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

An alternative way of implementing this would be to leave the doi parameter as the "doi", but to add a parameter called something like "don't_link_the_doi" which could be set in the instances where the doi parser doesn't recognise the DOI,. Smith609 Talk 17:23, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that was the intent for the doi_broken proposal. Sorry I wasn't clear. The idea is that doi= still specifies the DOI as before, but doi_broken=foo says "Please don't link from the DOI text, and put a comment saying 'foo' after the DOI text". Eubulides (talk) 17:33, 10 June 2008 (UTC)