Template:Citation parameter legend

• author: Author. Use to specify a single author of the paper, or alternately, to specify all the authors of the paper in whatever format desired. If you use author to specify all the authors, do not specify the following author-related parameters.
  • last works with first to produce last, first;. These parameters produce the maximum metadata and should be used if possible.
  • author2, last2, first2 and subsequent should be used for co-authors (up to 9 will be displayed before truncation with "et al".
  • authorlink name of an existing Wikipedia article about the author. If present, either author or last & first become a link to the appropriate article.
  • authorlink2 to authorlink9 may similarly be used when there is an article on coauthors specified using author2 or last2, first2 etc.
  • coauthors: Full name of additional author or authors. Please use 'author2', 'author3', etc instead.
  • author-separator: over-ride the default semi-colon that separates authors' names.
  • authormask – This parameter is primarily intended for use in bibliographies where multiple works by a single author are listed. It replaces the name of the first author (which must still be provided to garner metadata) with a strike-thru dash (—) authormask em in length. So if |authormask=1 then the dash will be one em in length, if |authormask=2 it will be two em long and so on. Set authormask to a text value to display a word instead – for example, 'with'. You must still include |last= and |first= for metadata purposes.
  • author-name-separator: over-ride the default comma that separates authors' names.
  • display-authors: Truncate the list of authors at an arbitrary point with "et al". Still include the first 9 authors to allow metadata to be generated.
• date: January 1, 2006. Full date of publication.
  • year: 2006. Year of publication (ignored if the date field is used).
    • month: January. Month of publication (ignored if the date field is used, or if the year field is not used).
      • day: 31. Day of month of publication (ignored if the date field is used, or if the month field is not used).
• title: Title of article.
• journal: Name of the journal or periodical.
• volume: Volume number of the journal in which the article is found
• series or version: At most one of these may be entered. In either case the value will be displayed in plaintext after the title.
  • series: According to the 14th edition of Chicago Manual of Style p. 576, "As in the case of book series, some journals have attained such longevity that they have begun a new series of volumes or issues. Identification of the series (n.s., 2d ser., 3d ser., ser. b) must be made in citations to these journals."
  • version: Use when citing a paper. It may be used, for example, for standards documents, which retain the same title and document number (e.g. ISO nnnnn) but may have many revisions (e.g. ISO nnnnn-xxxx).
• issue: Journal's issue number, or issue name.
• page or pages: 45–47: first page, and optional last page (separated by an en dash –). If you need to refer to a specific page within a cited source, use Template:Rp or shortened footnotes.
• at: Position within the resource when page=/pages= is inappropriate, e.g. at=para. 14 (when citing a source without page numbers) or at=02:56 (a film or audio timestamp), or at=no. 456 (something in a numbered list). This parameter is ignored if page=/pages= is specified.
• publisher: Publisher of journal or periodical; should not include corporate designation such as "Ltd" or "Inc". Only include if ISSN and DOI are unavailable.
  • location: Place of publication for journal or periodical.
• issn: The publication's International Standard Serial Number such as 1111-2220. The eight-figure ISSN may be split into two groups of four using a hyphen; but neither an N-dash nor a space are valid for use as separator between the groups.
• pmid: The document's PubMed Unique Identifier, such as 15128012
• pmc: The document's PubMed Central article number (PMCID) for full-text free repository of an article, such as 246835
  • pmc-embargo-date: The date that an article will be freely accessible at PubMed central. After this date, the title will automatically link to the free full text at PubMed Central (and the parameter will be removed by a bot).
• oclc: The periodical's Online Computer Library Center ID number, such as 3185581
• doi: A digital object identifier for the document, such as 10.1130/0091-7613(1990)018<1153:TAFSIA>2.3.CO;2.

• doi_brokendate: Sometimes the doi target link might not function (e.g. the journal is transferred to a new publisher which does not provide doi access). A blanked out doi parameter could lead to a later editor or bot re-adding the doi. Instead, use this parameter, which takes a date argument. Must not be wikilinked.
  The doi value is still shown, but without a link, and the mainspace article is added to "Category:Pages with DOIs broken since YYYY".

• bibcode: The document's bibcode in the Astrophysics Data System, e.g., 1924MNRAS..84..308E
• id: A unique identifier, used if none of the above are applicable. In this case, you need to specify the kind of identifier you are using, preferably with a template like {{US patent}}, {{MR}} / {{MathSciNet}}, {{Zbl}}, {{arXiv}}, {{JSTOR}} or {{JFM}}. (Use one of the more specialized parameters if possible; they are linked automatically. In other words, don't use id = PMID 15128012 anymore. Use pmid = 15128012.)
• language: Language, e.g. Finnish. (English is assumed and should not be specified.)
  • trans_title: Translated (English) title, when the title is in a foreign language. Can be used without source title when the source title is unknown.
• url: This should point to, in descending order of preference:

1. A free online version of the full text
2. An online version of the full text, for which subscription is required
3. An abstract or information page, if no DOI or PMID record is available

If a DOI or PMID is available, the URL should only be specified if it would point to a different page to that which a DOI or PMID would redirect to.

Note: the URL must be properly encoded, especially replacing any double quote (") with %22. See Percent-encoding for more information.

• accessdate: Full date when URL was last checked. Should use the same format as the other full dates in the references. Must not be wikilinked.
• format: Format of document at that URL, e.g. PDF. Don't specify for HTML (implied as default). This parameter is sometimes used for completely different purposes, with values such as "fee required" and "reprint", but its original intent was to warn readers of file formats that their browsers might have trouble with.
• laysummary: URL of a lay summary, which could be in a popular science magazine or newspaper.
  • laysource: Name of the source, e.g. The Guardian (UK newspaper) or New Scientist.
  • laydate: Date of publication or, where this is not available, date of retrieval of the lay summary.

An alternate method of adding one or more references to common media (preferably in Layman's terms) from the related journal citation can be specified within a single <ref>...</ref> tag using other citation templates; for example:

Text in the article.<ref>{{cite journal | ... }}<br/>
'''Related news articles:'''
*{{cite news | ... }}
*{{cite web | ... }}</ref>

• quote: Relevant excerpt from the journal.
• ref: ID for anchor. By default, no anchor is generated. The ordinary nonempty value |ref=ID generates an anchor with the given ID; such a linkable reference can be made the target of wikilinks to full references, especially useful in short citations like shortened notes and parenthetical referencing. The special value |ref=harv generates an anchor suitable for the {{harv}} template; see anchors for Harvard referencing templates.
• postscript: if specified, over-rides the default behaviour of terminating the citation with a full stop. Leave blank to suppress the full stop. This may be useful when using a quote which ends in punctuation, or when generating an output consistent with other templates. It is preferred to manually adding ending punctuation, as the punctuation occurs within the <cite> tag, so will appear before any icons added by browser plugins.