Types and fields

Every reference has a type — journal article, book, book chapter, thesis, conference paper, report or web page. The type defines which fields actually matter for that work and how the entry is written out when you cite it in a note or export it to BibTeX or RIS. This page lists the available types and every field a reference can hold.

Reference types

The type is the first choice in the reference form. It also decides the entry type used on export — a conference paper becomes an inproceedings entry in BibTeX and a CONF record in RIS, for example. Pick the one that best describes the work.

Journal article: Article published in a scientific journal. Uses the Journal / Book field (journal name), volume, issue, pages and DOI.
Book: Work published as a book. Uses publisher and ISBN.
Book chapter: A part of a book with its own authorship. Uses the Journal / Book field (book title), publisher, pages and ISBN.
Thesis: Master's or doctoral academic work. Usually uses the institution as publisher and the year.
Conference paper: Paper presented at a conference. Uses the Journal / Book field (proceedings/event name) and pages.
Report: Technical, institutional or government report. Uses the publisher/institution and the year.
Web page: Content published online. Uses mainly the URL.

The fields

These are all the fields a reference can store, as they appear in the form. Fill in the ones that make sense for the work — the rest can stay empty.

Type: The kind of work: journal article, book, book chapter, thesis, conference paper, report or web page. It defines which fields are relevant and the entry type used on export.
Title: The title of the work.
Authors: The authors of the work, one per line, in the order they appear.
Year: The year of publication, as 4 digits (e.g. 2021) — the form rejects anything else instead of discarding it silently.
Journal / Book: The name of the journal (for articles), the book (for chapters) or the proceedings (for conference papers) where the work was published.
Volume: The volume of the journal or series.
Issue: The issue (number) within the volume.
Pages: The page range of the work.
Publisher: The publisher or institution responsible for the publication.
DOI: The digital object identifier, used to locate the work uniquely, to fetch metadata and to fetch its cited references.
ISBN: The standard book identifier, used mainly for books and chapters.
URL: The web address of the work, useful for pages and for accessing the online version.
Full text / repository: A link to read the work online — a PDF, a page or a repository. Only the link is stored, never the content itself.
Abstract: The abstract or summary of the content, so you remember what it's about without reopening the work.
Keywords: The work's own keywords.
Tags: Your own tags, to classify the reference your way (separate from the work's keywords).
Favorite: A star to mark the most important references; the Favorites filter gathers them.
Collections: The collection (or collections) the reference belongs to — a reference can live in several at once.

Not every field applies to every type. Volume and issue make sense for journal articles but not for a web page; ISBN is for books and chapters, not for an article. Leave the fields that don't fit empty — they simply won't appear when the reference is formatted.

Keywords and tags are different things. Keywords are the terms the work itself declares; tags are your own labels for organizing your library your way. Use tags for how you think about the reference, not how the publisher indexed it.

To learn how these fields get filled — automatically by DOI, PMID, ISBN or URL, from a web search, by hand or from an imported file — see the "Add references" page.