Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/abbreviated-transcluded citations versus expanded citations
There are various ways to generate citations in Wikipedia. Even when the generated citations look the same to readers, the code used to generate the citations can vary for Wikipedia contributors. This page describes some of the differences in making citations and hopefully someday will lead to the development of best practices for making citations.
Fully expanded citations versus abbreviated/transcluded citations edit
When a user cites an article with a DOI or PMID, then that user may either present that in an expanded form or in abbreviated form. There is probably consensus that Wikipedia contributors would like citations to be presented in expanded form. However, all expanded forms are presented with local code on each article, and all abbreviated forms are presented with templates which are transcluded from a central storage external to each article.
Probably the most agreeable citation format would be a transcluded partially expanded citation, which would appear to the reader like the transcluded abbreviated citation and appear to the editor as a new sort of citation which contained only the most identifying characteristics, perhaps including the first author and the title of the piece.
- An example abbreviated/transcluded citation -
{{cite doi|10.1002.2F14651858.CD007209.pub2}}
Sampson, E. L.; Candy, B.; Jones, L. (2009). Sampson, Elizabeth L (ed.). "Enteral tube feeding for older people with advanced dementia". The Cochrane Library (2): CD007209. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD007209.pub2. PMID 19370678.edit
- An example expanded citation -
{{Cite journal | last1 = Sampson | first1 = E. L. | last2 = Candy | first2 = B. | last3 = Jones | first3 = L. | editor1-last = Sampson | editor1-first = Elizabeth L | title = Enteral tube feeding for older people with advanced dementia | doi = 10.1002/14651858.CD007209.pub2 | journal = Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews | issue = 2 | pages = CD007209 | year = 2009 | pmid = 19370678 | pmc = }}
Sampson, E. L.; Candy, B.; Jones, L. (2009). Sampson, Elizabeth L (ed.). "Enteral tube feeding for older people with advanced dementia". Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (2): CD007209. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD007209.pub2. PMID 19370678.
- An example theoretical partially expanded template citation, which does not currently exist -
{{cite doi|10.1002.2F14651858.CD007209.pub2}}, which upon saving the page automatically transforms to become in the wikitext {{Cite journal | last1 = Sampson | first1 = E. L. | title = Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews | chapter = Enteral tube feeding for older people with advanced dementia | doi = 10.1002/14651858.CD007209.pub2edit
Sampson, E. L.; Candy, B.; Jones, L. (2009). Sampson, Elizabeth L (ed.). "Enteral tube feeding for older people with advanced dementia". The Cochrane Library (2): CD007209. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD007209.pub2. PMID 19370678.edit
- Summary
The only visible difference to a reader for the transcluded/abbreviated citations is the link to manually change the template when a template is used. To an editor, the transcluded/abbreviated citation template is widely said to be confusing because it contributors cannot easily match the non-human readable identification number to a paper without cross checking the number to papers.
The argument for keeping abbreviated/transcluded citations is that the central storage of citations has value because it enables fixing broken citations and because it is the most likely candidate for automating cross-wiki of citations. The cost of doing this is a great contributor burden in readability and being a barrier to cross-wiki use because cross-wiki infrastructure does not exist and is not scheduled to be created as of Mar 2014.
The argument for using expanded citations is that it is the most readable option for Wikipedia contributors and because there is no way to know when a better option will be possible. One could also say that citations rarely are broken, so there is little need to give readers the option to fix broken ones at a source rather than ad hoc.
Ways to create abbreviated/transcluded citations edit
Abbreviated/transcluded citations are useful because they store citations in a central location in which they can be maintained then propagated out. This is useful now for updating all citations used in multiple articles of a given Wikipedia, and would be revolutionary in managing citations across languages if they could ever be hosted in a central database like Wikidata rather than just a local listing on every Wikipedia.
Abbreviated citations are created by Citation bot on various Wikipedias, including at least English and Mandarin Wikipedia.
- Citations from Citation bot
Citation bot completes citations for Template:Cite doi and Template:Cite PMID. When Citation bot does this, it makes a special template only for the doi of the paper and puts all citation information into that template. The idea is that when that citation is used, anyone can call that specific template for use only for that citation. Also, if the metadata in the original source is incorrect and thus presented incorrectly when it is called, any user may fix it in that citation template so that whenever anyone else uses it, it will be corrected.
It is conceivable that to make these templates give expanded citations, they could be substituted into the article. However, only experienced users would know how to do this, and doing this would eliminate the ease for anyone to fix citations if they wished because when this is substituted the "edit" link is not presented as it would be with a live template. This prevents the template from being updated by users, thus removing a major advantage of using abbr
A future advantage of having citations stored in templates is that eventually they will be migrated to Wikidata, so that if anyone needs to use the same citation in multiple Wikimedia projects then they can pull it from Wikidata rather than replicate it for each Wikimedia project. Example problems which this would fix are Wikimedia Commons' current inability to automatically generate citations from DOIs/PMIDs and the perceived superfluousness of establishing its own citation structure; and the problem of translating cited text between languages which is going to be problematic if citations do not have their formatting translated through transclusion.
Ways to create expanded citations edit
Expanded citations are useful because Wikipedia contributors can more easily match them to sources than is possible with the abbreviated/transcluded citations. Also, for so long as there is no way to use citations through interwiki citations, expanded citations are possible to translate even though doing this is very problematic for consuming lots of time and being highly prone to breaking.
The RefToolbar is a tool available through the edit box which guides the user to either manually fill in a citation or, more commonly on medicine, to generate a citation automatically when given a PMID or a DOI. It is great, but the citation it gives cannot be altered at its source by users whereas Citation bot templates can be. Also, its citations omit things which Citation bot includes, like for example, links to a PubMed Central papers.
Very cool tool with a lot of support. It is supposed to take identifiers and then turn them into citations. As of December 2013 it is tagged as nonfunctional but it still works. Using this tool requires the user to go to some external page, give an identifier, then get code to paste in return. Because of the extra steps this is more problematic than the RefToolbar's autofill or the Citation bot templates.
- Manually created citations
Anyone may manually complete a citation if they like, for example by using Template:Cite journal. Whenever a DOI or ISBN exists this is never the best option because it is more work, more prone to user mistakes, and would likely have variations every time someone used it. Manually created citations are not preferred by anyone who knows other options unless they special reasons to use them.