Citation glossary
95 terms from citation and academic writing, defined in plain English with examples — the abbreviations that show up in style guides, the parts a reference is built from, the identifiers that pin a source down, and the vocabulary of scholarly publishing.
Browse by topic
Citation mechanics (21)
How citations behave inside a paper: in-text forms, notes, repeated sources, and the abbreviations that go with them.
Reference elements (13)
The parts a reference is built from, and the names of the lists they end up in.
Identifiers (8)
The codes that pin a source down: DOI, ISBN, ISSN, PMID, arXiv ID, ORCID, and friends.
Style systems and formats (8)
The families citation styles fall into, and the machine formats references travel in.
Scholarly publishing (18)
How research gets published, versioned, corrected, and measured.
Source evaluation (7)
The vocabulary for judging what a source is and whether it can carry your argument.
Academic integrity (11)
Plagiarism and its near neighbours, plus the permissions vocabulary around reuse.
Research writing (9)
The moving parts of a research paper and the tools used to manage them.
All terms A–Z
A
- Abstract
- A short standalone summary of a paper — usually 150–300 words — covering purpose, method, results, and conclusion.
- Access date
- The date you viewed an online source, recorded when the content is liable to change or carries no publication date.
- Annotated bibliography
- A bibliography where each entry is followed by a short paragraph summarising and evaluating the source.
- arXiv ID
- The identifier for a preprint on arXiv, in the form 2403.01234, with a version suffix marking which revision you read.
- Attribution
- Naming the source of a specific idea, phrase, method, or dataset so a reader knows what is yours and what is borrowed.
- Author–date system
- A citation system where the in-text marker is the author's surname plus the year, and the reference list is alphabetical.
B
- Bibliography
- A list of sources at the end of a work that may include material you consulted but never cited.
- BibTeX
- The reference format used with LaTeX, storing each source as a typed record of field–value pairs in a .bib file.
- Block quotation
- A long quotation set off from the body text as its own indented paragraph, without quotation marks.
C
- Citation checker
- A tool that reads a finished document and reports formatting errors and mismatches between in-text citations and the reference list.
- Citation count
- How many later publications cite a given work, according to whichever index you ask.
- Citation index
- A database that records which publications cite which, allowing you to trace a literature forwards in time.
- Common knowledge
- Information a source's intended readers can be assumed to know already, and which therefore needs no citation.
- Container title
- The name of the larger work a source sits inside: the journal holding an article, the book holding a chapter, the site holding a page.
- Contributor
- Anyone credited for a source other than its primary author: editor, translator, illustrator, director, host, or narrator.
- Copyright
- The legal right controlling copying and reuse of a creative work, which is separate from the academic duty to cite.
- Corporate author
- An organisation credited as the author of a work, used when no individual is named.
- Creative Commons licence
- A family of standard licences by which a rightsholder grants reuse rights in advance, on stated conditions.
- CSL (Citation Style Language)
- An open XML format for describing how a citation style formats references, used by Zotero, Mendeley, Paperpile, and this site.
- CSL-JSON
- The JSON representation of a reference used internally by CSL citation engines, and the most faithful format for moving citations between tools.
D
- Data citation
- Citing a dataset as a source in its own right, with its own authors, title, version, repository, and DOI.
- Direct quotation
- Reproducing a source's exact words inside quotation marks or as a block, with a citation that includes a locator.
- DOI (Digital Object Identifier)
- A permanent identifier for a document — usually a journal article — that resolves to its current location no matter how many times the publisher moves it.
E
- Edition
- A numbered revision of a work, cited whenever it is not the first, because content and pagination differ between editions.
- Ellipsis in quotations
- Three spaced or unspaced dots showing that you have cut words out of the middle of a quotation.
- Endnote
- A note collected at the end of a chapter, article, or book rather than at the foot of the page, but otherwise identical to a footnote.
- Erratum and corrigendum
- Published corrections to an article: an erratum for the publisher's error, a corrigendum for the author's.
- et al.
- Latin for “and others” — an abbreviation that stands in for the co-authors you are not naming in an in-text citation.
F
- Fair use / fair dealing
- The legal doctrine allowing limited reuse of copyrighted material without permission, for purposes such as criticism, comment, teaching, and research.
- Footnote
- A note printed at the bottom of the page, keyed to a superscript number in the text, that carries either a citation or a comment too tangential for the body.
G
- Gold open access
- Open access provided by the journal itself at publication, typically funded by an article processing charge.
- Green open access
- Open access achieved by depositing a copy in a repository, usually the accepted manuscript rather than the publisher's PDF.
- Grey literature
- Research and reporting published outside commercial channels: government and NGO reports, working papers, theses, standards, and conference material.
H
- h-index
- A researcher-level metric: the largest number h such that they have h publications each cited at least h times.
- Handle / persistent URI
- A persistent identifier issued by a repository, of which the DOI is the best-known implementation.
- Hanging indent
- A paragraph shape where the first line sits flush left and every later line is indented, used for reference-list entries in most styles.
- Hypothesis
- A testable, falsifiable prediction about the relationship between variables, stated before the data is analysed.
I
- Ibid.
- A note-style abbreviation meaning “in the same place”, used to repeat the source cited in the immediately preceding note.
- Impact factor
- A journal-level metric: the average number of citations in one year to articles the journal published in the two preceding years.
- In-text citation
- A short pointer placed in the body of your paper that identifies which source a statement came from and sends the reader to the full reference.
- Institutional repository
- A university's own archive of the research its members produce, holding theses, accepted manuscripts, datasets, and reports.
- ISBN
- A 13-digit identifier for a specific edition and format of a book, assigned per product rather than per title.
- ISSN
- An eight-digit identifier for a serial publication — a journal, magazine, or newspaper — rather than for any single article.
K
- Keywords
- The terms listed with a paper to make it findable, chosen to match how other researchers would search for it.
L
- Literature review
- A synthesis of the existing research on a question, organised by theme or argument rather than as a list of studies.
- Locator
- The part of a citation that points to the exact spot inside a source: a page, paragraph, timestamp, section, or line.
M
- Methodology
- The account of how a study was carried out, detailed enough that another researcher could repeat it.
N
- n.d. (no date)
- The abbreviation used in place of a year when a source carries no identifiable publication date.
- Narrative citation
- An in-text citation where the author's name is part of your sentence and only the date or page stays in brackets.
- Notes-bibliography system
- A citation system where the full citation lives in a footnote or endnote and the text carries only a superscript number.
- Numeric citation system
- A citation system where sources are numbered in order of first appearance and the in-text marker is that number.
O
- OCLC number
- The identifier WorldCat assigns to a bibliographic record, useful for locating a specific copy of a rare or old item.
- Open access
- Research literature that is free to read online, and usually free to reuse under an open licence.
- ORCID iD
- A persistent identifier for a researcher, solving the problem that names are neither unique nor stable.
P
- Page range
- The first and last page of a work inside a larger container, given in the reference entry rather than the in-text citation.
- Paraphrase
- Restating a specific passage from a source in your own words and structure, at roughly the same length, with a citation.
- Parenthetical citation
- An in-text citation placed entirely inside brackets, so the source names sit outside the grammar of your sentence.
- Patchwriting
- Rewriting a source by swapping synonyms and reordering clauses while keeping its sentence structure — a paraphrase that is not one.
- Peer review
- The process by which independent researchers in a field evaluate a manuscript before a journal agrees to publish it.
- Permalink
- A URL the publisher undertakes to keep working, as opposed to a session, search, or tracking URL that will rot.
- Place of publication
- The city where a book was published, still required by Chicago and MLA-adjacent practice but dropped from APA 7.
- Plagiarism
- Presenting someone else's words, ideas, data, or structure as your own, whether deliberately or through careless citation.
- PMID and PMCID
- PubMed's numeric identifier for a biomedical citation (PMID) and PubMed Central's identifier for a full-text copy (PMCID).
- Popular source
- A source written for a general audience — journalism, magazines, most websites — rather than for specialists.
- Postprint (accepted manuscript)
- The version of a paper after peer review but before the publisher's typesetting — the version most repositories are allowed to host.
- Predatory journal
- A journal that charges publication fees while providing little or no genuine peer review or editorial service.
- Preprint
- A manuscript posted publicly before peer review, on a server such as arXiv, bioRxiv, medRxiv, or SSRN.
- Primary source
- A direct, first-hand record of the thing you are studying, rather than someone else's account of it.
- Publisher
- The organisation that issued a book or report, named in the reference so the reader can identify the exact printing.
R
- Reference entry
- One complete record in a reference list, containing everything a reader needs to find the source themselves.
- Reference list
- The alphabetised list at the end of a paper containing a full entry for every source cited in the text — and nothing else.
- Reference manager
- Software that stores your sources, attaches PDFs, and inserts formatted citations into a document as you write.
- Research database
- A searchable collection of scholarly content, usually licensed by a library, covering a discipline or a publisher's catalogue.
- Research question
- The specific, answerable question a study sets out to address, narrow enough that you can tell whether you answered it.
- Retraction
- A journal's formal withdrawal of a published paper because its findings are unreliable, usually through error or misconduct.
- RIS
- A plain-text reference interchange format using two-letter tags, exported by most databases and read by most reference managers.
- Running head
- A short version of the paper's title repeated at the top of every page, together with the page number.
S
- Scholarly source
- A source written by researchers for other researchers, reporting or reviewing original work, with full citations.
- Secondary citation (“as cited in”)
- Citing a source you have only read about in another source, by naming both and marking that you did not see the original.
- Secondary source
- A source that describes, analyses, or interprets primary material rather than presenting it directly.
- Self-plagiarism
- Reusing your own previously submitted or published work as though it were new, without disclosing it.
- Shortened note
- The abbreviated footnote used for a source you have already cited in full: author surname, a short title, and the page.
- sic
- Latin for “thus” — inserted in brackets inside a quotation to show that an error or oddity is the original author's, not yours.
- Signal phrase
- The words that introduce borrowed material and name its source, such as “As Larsen argues,” or “According to the 2023 review.”
- Software citation
- Citing a program, package, or model as a source, including its version and — where the authors provide one — their preferred citation.
- Summary
- A compressed account of a source's overall argument in your own words, much shorter than the original, with a citation.
- Supplementary material
- Files published alongside an article — data, code, extended methods, extra figures — hosted with it but outside the main text.
T
- Tertiary source
- A source that compiles and summarises secondary literature: encyclopedias, textbooks, handbooks, and most reference works.
- Thesis statement
- One or two sentences stating the argument a paper will make — a claim someone could disagree with, not a description of the topic.
- Title page
- The first page of a paper, carrying the title, your name, and whatever institutional details your style requires.
- Topic sentence
- The sentence, usually first in a paragraph, that states what the paragraph will establish.
V
- Version of record
- The publisher's final, typeset, citable version of an article — the one page numbers and DOIs point at.
- Volume and issue
- The numbering that locates a journal article within a periodical's run: the volume is usually the year's worth, the issue a single instalment.
W
- Work with no author
- A source with no identifiable author, cited by its title in the position the author would occupy.
- Works Cited
- MLA's name for the reference list — the alphabetised record of every source cited in the paper.