Cite as you write

Papero puts citations into your text while you write. You open Cite where the citation goes, find the paper and press Cite on it. The in-text citation appears at your cursor in your document's citation style, and the paper joins the reference list at the end of the document.

On a Mac, use ⌘ wherever this page says Ctrl.

Open Cite

Put your cursor where the citation should go, then do one of these:

• Press Cite in the toolbar.
• Type @ at the start of a paragraph or after a space. An @ inside a word, as in an email address, stays plain text.
• Press Ctrl+Shift+C.

On a computer, Cite opens as a panel to the right of your text, so it never covers the sentence you are citing. On a phone it opens above your cursor.

The toolbar button and the shortcut open the Search tab. Typing @ opens the tab you used last. A citation cannot go in a code block.

There are three more ways in:

• Accept and cite under a suggestion takes the suggestion, then finds papers for that sentence. See Autocomplete.
• Find papers on a section in the prompts panel opens Cite with a search made from your document's title and the section's heading. The citation goes at the end of that section's text.
• Pasting a DOI on its own into your text opens Cite on that paper. See Add a source by identifier.

The three tabs

• Search: find papers by topic, or paste a DOI, PMID, arXiv ID or ISBN. See Find papers.
• In this document: the sources this document already cites, the most recently cited first, so you can cite one again in one click. The box above the list filters them by title, author or year.
• Library: the sources in your library, the most recently changed first. Type in the box to search them. Each source you cite is saved there, and you can import more on the Library page.

Both lists work the same on Free and Plus.

Cite a paper

1. Put your cursor where the citation goes and open Cite.
2. In the Search tab, type a topic and press Enter or Search. With the box empty, Find papers for this sentence searches for the sentence you are writing.
3. Press Cite on the paper you want.

The citation goes in at your cursor and the card now says Cited. Cite stays open, so you can add more. Each paper you cite while it is open joins the same citation, and a notice says Added to the citation. Press Keep separate in that notice to make the paper you just added a citation of its own.

Press Save on a card to keep a paper in your library without citing it. Press Esc, or click in your text, to close Cite.

A paper that has been retracted says Retracted on its card. When you press Cite on it, Papero asks This paper has been retracted. Cite it anyway? Press Cite anyway or Cancel.

If the source you need is not in the results, press Add custom citation at the bottom of Cite. See Custom citations.

Edit a citation in your text

Click a citation in your text, or select it and press Enter. A box lists the sources in that citation. For each source you can fill in or use:

• Page or location: the page you cite, such as 45. Papero passes it to the style as a page, so the style adds its own label, such as p. in APA.
• Text before and Text after: words the style prints inside the citation, such as "see" before or "for a review" after.
• Edit source: change the source's details. See Custom citations.
• Show in PDF: when the source has a PDF in your library, opens it at the passage closest to your sentence. See The PDF reader.
• Remove: takes the source out of the citation. Removing the last source removes the citation.
• Move up and Move down: change the order the style prints the sources in.

When a citation holds more than one source, Split into separate citations turns it into one citation per source, side by side. Each change to a citation is one step that Ctrl+Z undoes.

Free and Plus

Citing works the same on Free and Plus: the in-text citations, the reference list, and seeing and editing the sources you cite. Paper searches count toward your plan's allowance. See Reference list, and to compare the plans, see pricing.

The in-app guide Find and cite papers, under Guides at the foot of the sidebar, walks through the same steps.

Next: find papers.