Citation Management

Overview

Manage citations systematically throughout the research and writing process. This skill provides tools and strategies for extracting accurate metadata from identifiers and bibliographic sources, validating citation information, cleaning duplicate references, and generating properly formatted BibTeX entries.

Critical for maintaining citation accuracy, avoiding reference errors, and ensuring reproducible research.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when:

• Resolving known or candidate papers from identifiers, titles, Google Scholar, or PubMed records
• Converting DOIs, PMIDs, or arXiv IDs to properly formatted BibTeX
• Extracting complete metadata for citations (authors, title, journal, year, etc.)
• Validating existing citations for accuracy
• Cleaning and formatting BibTeX files
• Checking citation counts for known papers in a specific field
• Verifying that citation information matches the actual publication
• Building a bibliography for a manuscript or thesis
• Checking for duplicate citations
• Ensuring consistent citation formatting

Core Workflow

Citation management follows a systematic process:

Phase 1: Citation Source Lookup

Goal: Locate exact source records for known references or tightly scoped citation candidates.

Google Scholar Search

Google Scholar provides the most comprehensive coverage across disciplines.

Basic Search:

# Search for papers on a topic
python scripts/search_google_scholar.py "CRISPR gene editing" \
  --limit 50 \
  --output results.json

# Search with year filter
python scripts/search_google_scholar.py "machine learning protein folding" \
  --year-start 2020 \
  --year-end 2024 \
  --limit 100 \
  --output ml_proteins.json