Custom citations

Some sources are not in the search results, such as a web page, a report or a book without a DOI. You can add them by hand as a custom citation. Papero saves the source to your library and cites it at your cursor, like a paper you found by search.

Custom citations work on Free and Plus, and they keep working when your paper searches are used up.

Add a custom citation

1. Put your cursor where the citation goes and open Cite. See Cite as you write.
2. Press Add custom citation at the bottom of Cite. The Add a custom citation drawer opens.
3. If the source has an identifier, paste it under DOI, PMID, arXiv ID or ISBN and press Fetch details. Papero says Looking it up…, then Details filled in. Check them before you save.
4. Pick the Source type.
5. Fill in or correct the details.
6. Under This citation, add a Page or location, Text before or Text after if you need them.
7. Press Add citation.

The identifier field takes the forms Papero's search box takes, and also a bare PMID, a bare new-style arXiv ID and a bare ISBN-10. See Add a source by identifier. If the lookup finds nothing, fill in the details yourself.

The fields

The drawer groups the fields under four headings.

Basic details

• Source type: Journal article, Book, Book chapter, Web page or Report.
• Title.
• Authors: a Family name and a Given name for each person. Add author adds a row. When the author is an organisation, such as a government department, press the organisation button on its row (its tip says Organisation: one name field). The row then has one name field.

Publication

• A field for where the source appeared, which depends on its type: Journal for a journal article, Book title for a book chapter, Website for a web page, and Series or institution for a report. A book has none.
• Volume, Issue and Pages.
• Publisher and Year.
• A conference paper whose details were fetched also has Conference location.

Online

• Link (URL) and Accessed on, the date you read it.

Identifiers

• DOI of this source.

Checks before saving

Papero checks the form before it saves, and says what to fix:

• Add a title.
• Use a four-digit year.
• Links must start with http:// or https://.
• That DOI does not look right. A DOI starts with 10.
• Add a family name for every author, or tick Organisation.

What Papero does when it saves

Papero tidies what you typed: it cleans up spaces and markup, and leaves out a link it cannot use. If that changes anything, the drawer says so and shows what it kept. Check the details, then press Add citation to cite the source.

If you already saved a source with the same DOI, Papero reuses it instead of saving a copy. When the source is already in your library, it says This source is already in your library, so Papero cited that one instead of saving a new copy.

Edit a saved source

You can edit a source you have saved, on Free and Plus.

1. Click a citation of the source in your text.
2. Press Edit source on the source's row.
3. Change the details in the Edit source drawer, then press Save changes.

The change is to the source in your library, so each document that cites it shows the change. The drawer also lets you add or open the source's PDF. See Upload PDFs.

You can also edit a source from the Library page. See Your library.

Next: the reference list.