Screenshot of an Advanced Processing dropdown menu. 'Citation Matching' is highlighted. Bibliographic References, PubMed Reference Correction, and Convert-Clean Numbered Citation Style have already been run

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Citations

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Citation Matching automates the process of comparing and matching citations with their references/objects, including:

bibliographic reference entries
objects (such as figures, tables, boxes, equations, and appendices that called out within the text)

Citation Matching also automatically:

Identifies all bibliographic citations that have no matching reference entry
Identifies all reference entries that do not have at least one citation
Identifies all figure, table, box, section, and appendix callouts with no matching figure, table, box, section or appendix title/caption
Identifies all figure legends, box legends, table titles, and footnotes (unlinked and plain text) that do not have at least one callout
Identifies all section numbers that do not have at least one callout

Each of these issues, if it occurs, is automatically indicated in your document with the insertion of an author query. The actual citations and callouts in the manuscript are indicated with a color-coded character style both to aid in proofing and to generate cross-reference markup in the XML.

Author queries are inserted as Word comments.

How to use

To use Citation Matching:

Run eXtyles up through Convert/Clean Numbered Citations.
Look at the body of the document and determine the citation style that now appears in the document (e.g., name-date, numbers in brackets, etc.).

If the eXtyles process Convert/Clean Numbered Citations has been run, the citation style that appears in the document should match the correct editorial style of your organization.

Select eXtyles > Advanced Processing > Citation Matching. You will see a dialog asking you to select the bibliographic citation style used in the document. Select the appropriate style and click OK.

For organizations that do not include bibliographic references, select “No References; match objects (figures, tables)” to run Citation Matching on objects only.

Reference Citation Matching Failures

Citation Matching automatically applies the character style cite_bib to all reference citations in the document and generally this is a very accurate process. Occasionally, however, eXtyles will fail to automatically apply this style during Citation Matching; or, it may incorrectly apply the style to text that is not a reference citation. Common reasons for citation matching misfires and how to resolve them follow.

The Citation Is Ambiguous

Occasionally, both numbered (Vancouver) and name-date (Harvard) citations are presented in such a way as to make programmatic identification by eXtyles difficult. For numbered citations this can include scenarios where the citation too closely resembles part of a formula (however, see “Math and Superscript Citation Matching” below).

For example, eXtyles may not identify 23 as a reference citation because it resembles a formula or mathematical notation:

Refer to the DSM-5²³for more information.

For name-date citations this can include circumstances where a non-citation name and date closely resemble a citation. For example, the following may be incorrectly identified as a reference citation even though it refers to a hurricane:

As seen with previous super-storms (Katrina 2015) weather patterns are changing.

In these cases it is unlikely that making editorial changes to the text will result in better automated processing. Instead, the correct citation style cite_bib should be hand applied or removed (using the Ctrl + Space shortcut).

Math and Superscript Citation Matching

In the following ways, eXtyles carefully checks superscript numbers to ensure that they are citations and not part of mathematical expressions.

Superscript 2 and 3: Superscript 2 and 3 appear so often in simple inline math that they are handled as special cases. These superscripts are treated as a citation only if they are immediately preceded by punctuation or they are part of a citation range. The following two examples are valid citations: “This is a simple citation.²” and “This is a simple citation range.^2–4”

Accepted superscript numbers: The following cases are always assumed to be citations:

Punctuation immediately prior to a superscript number
A word of four letters or more immediately prior to a superscript number

Rejected superscript numbers: The following cases are always assumed not to be citations:

A single italic letter immediately prior to a superscript number
Any Greek letter immediately prior to a superscript number
The number “10” immediately prior to a superscript number, as this is typically a number raised to a power of 10 (e.g., 10⁷)
Any mathematical character (such as +, –, or /) immediately prior to a superscript number

The Citation Is a Word Field

If reference citations are formatted as Word fields (through the use of, e.g., reference-management software such as EndNote) eXtyles Citation Matching will not identify them. eXtyles Advanced Processes are not able to read within Word fields and so it is important to ensure that previous eXtyles processes that take care to convert fields to plain text (e.g., Cleanup) are run prior to Citation Matching.

The Character Styling of References Is Incorrect or Incomplete

If Citation Matching warns that a reference citation does not have a corresponding reference entry and yet one exists, check to make sure that the reference paragraph has been correctly character-styled by Bibliographic References Processing. Citation Matching will struggle if important elements of the reference have not been styled correctly. For example, in the following reference the author names have not been correctly styled:

If not corrected, Citation Matching will produce a warning:

In such cases, the correct character styles can be hand-applied from the Word Styles menu to either (or both) the citation or reference.

Active Citations

Active citations in the text—such as “Smith and Jones, 1999, proved in their experiment”—will not be matched. Either the entire citation or the year must be enclosed in parentheses (or [brackets] if nested inside parentheses).

Tips for Successful Numbered Citation Matching

All numbered (Vancouver) style citations share some similar characteristics. In order for Citation Matching to work optimally, please observe the following rules:

Reference numbering:

Avoid the use of unnumbered references in the document
Ensure that citations use the same numbered style (note that Convert/Clean Numbered Citations will impose consistency)

Multiple numbered reference lists in a single document: Occasionally, editors will have multiple numbered reference lists within a single Word document. If this occurs (usually due to a letter and a reply), contact support about how to handle this situation.

Blank lines: Ensure that no empty paragraphs are in the reference section.

Extra returns: Make sure that each reference is contained in a single paragraph. Extra returns in the middle of a reference will cause problems.

Inappropriate leading text: Within brackets or parentheses, most text preceding citation numbers will cause failures. Exceptions are the common words “e.g.”, “see”, “ref”, “refs”, and “reference”.

Inappropriate trailing text: After the first number, additional text about pages, tables, figures, or an appendix is permitted. If other text is found, the number inside of brackets or parentheses is not treated as a citation, as in “(8-12 μm)”.

Object Citation Matching Failures

Citation Matching also automatically applies the character styles cite_fn (for footnotes), cite_fig (for figures), cite_box (for boxes) and cite_tbl (for tables) to all callouts in the text. However, occasionally eXtyles will fail to automatically apply these styles during Citation Matching. In such cases, the appropriate style must be applied by hand from the Word Styles menu to the callout. Citation Matching can then be run again to ensure the accuracy of these hand-applied styles.

The Citation Is to Another Article

Citation Matching incorrectly sees citations to figures and tables in other articles, such as “See figure 1 in Smith (1999)”, as part of the current article. Queries about such citations are incorrect and should be removed by deleting the Word comment containing them.

The Object Caption Is Incorrectly Styled

Citation Matching relies on correct styling of paragraphs. Please make sure the figure legends and table titles are styled correctly if you see erroneous queries.

Citation Matching