Show HN: One-click citations for your essays

[aaren]

For interest, you can do something like this on the command line using curl. Try these:

    curl -LH "Accept: text/bibliography" "http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022112061000019"

    curl -LH "Accept: text/bibliography; style=bibtex" "http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022112061000019"

    curl -LH "Accept: text/bibliography; style=apa" "http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022112061000019"

My academic life became a lot simpler when I learnt this - now I only need to maintain a database of {cite key: DOI} pairs, rather than a bibtex monster. Yes, I have tried Mendeley et al. and yes, I do prefer scripts that do what I tell them to.

[grundprinzip]

For CS I did it almost like that: Typically you write papers in LaTeX which means you need a correct Bibtex entry, and correct means its better be curated by someone else. Since most of the relevant CS publications are in DBLP [1] I wrote a small script that scans missing citation keys in your LaTeX file for actual DBLP keys and automatically builds this into a bibtex file that you can use [2]. If you integrate this command in your regular build cycle for LaTeX using for example latexmk manually maintaining bibtex files is a thing from the past.

[1] http://www.dblp.org/search/

[2] https://github.com/grundprinzip/dblp

[aroch]

Ok, that's pretty awesome. Time to shove this into a Word macro (because, I have to use word :( )

[michaelq]

This works great! I looked into doi.org before but I wasn't sure what their ratelimit is. I'm currently using phantomJS and google scholar for DOIs, and I think I might have hit their rate limit already, so I will take a second look at this!

[michaelq]

Do you know where I can find the documentation for this API? I got MLA style working, but I can't get Chicago/Turabian style working. Once I get this working, I plan to switch to this method for DOIs. Thanks!

[slg]

Very cool. This would have saved me tons of time in college.

One minor usability issue, clicking the different style after generating the citation doesn't have any result until you generate a new citation. That is a little unintuitive. I would either switch to the different style immediately or put some separation in the UI between the returned citation and the components that are used to generate a new citation.

[michaelq]

Thanks for the feedback. Originally, clicking the style pill button refreshed the citation (in the selected style), which I think is the behavior you're describing. It sounds like I should go back to that behavior.

[michaelq]

I've updated the app to go ahead and generate a new citation when you change styles. This happens pretty quickly, and this saves the user a click. Thanks for the feedback!

[bradknowles]

Going to the URL for this page (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7674449) and plugging that into speedcite, I get back truncated information on the subject line:

The MLA format cite comes out as:

"Show HN: One." Ycombinator.com. N.p. Web. 30 Apr. 2014. <https://news.ycombinator.com/>

The APA format cite comes out as:

Show HN: One. Ycombinator.com. Retrieved Apr 30, 2014, from https://news.ycombinator.com.

The Chicago formate cite comes out as:

"Show HN: One." Ycombinator.com. https://news.ycombinator.com/.

[bradknowles]

None of them get the subject correct, which is:

Show HN: One-click citations for your essays (speedcite.com)

[rkuykendall-com]

I clicked a book on the Amazon Books homepage and couldn't get it to work with the URL, ISBN, or ISBN-14.

The Fault in Our Stars Paperback by John Green: http://www.amazon.com/The-Fault-Stars-John-Green/dp/01424241...

[michaelq]

http://www.speedcite.com/?q=9780142424179&f=chi works. I had to remove the dash from the ISBN-14. This is a known issue (as of an hour ago). For the ISBN-10, there's a check digit X (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_digit#Design) that I haven't encountered before. Thank you for pointing out these issues!

[michaelq]

OK, I've fixed both of these ISBN issues and pushed them to production. So both 014242417X and 978-0142424179, and similar ISBNs, should be no problem.

[tommorris]

Can you add Wikipedia citation formats?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_templates

[michaelq]

I'm amazed Wikipedia doesn't have a first-party tool for this. I can look into it. I'm trying to keep SpeedCite as simple as possible. If there is demand, I could maybe build a stand-alone app for this?

[quasque]

Looks nice, but it doesn't retrieve results for many of the DOIs I tried, e.g. 10.1155/2014/863625 and 10.4103/0970-2113.129901, and gave an incorrect result for this one: 10.1073/pnas.1324197111

Feature suggestions: would be nice if it accepted PubMed ids, and supported other popular citation styles like Hardvard and Vancouver (or alternatively, permitted some customisation of the citation format).

[michaelq]

Thanks for your feedback! Posting on HN seems to have caused speedcite to exceed Google Scholar's rate limit, so I'll be switching to crossref.org for DOIs. Using the new logic (which I'm about to push), I was able to get the first two DOIs you mentioned, but I couldn't get 10.1073/pnas.1324197111 working on crossref.org or on Google Scholar. Where did you find this DOI? I'd like to figure out a way to support it and its kind.

[michaelq]

OK, I've pushed fixes for the DOIs, and the first two DOIs you listed here are working now.

[tlb]

It didn't work with the ISBN I tried: 978-0-06-121495-0. For the paperback of this book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_Your_Dangerous_Idea%3F. A google search on the ISBN finds it.

EDIT: aha, you have to remove dashes for it to work. It should probably do this automatically.

[michaelq]

Thanks for pointing this out. I thought I'd corrected this problem. I will fix this ASAP!

[bradknowles]

Doesn't work on the web page at http://gigaom.com/2014/04/29/supreme-court-reverses-patent-j...

The subject line gets cut much too short, and the URL gets trimmed to the root level of the domain.

[michaelq]

MLA, APA and Chicago style guides don't recommend including the full domain unless it would be too difficult to otherwise find. Hence the truncation.

[ofirnachum]

Is there a reason it doesn't show author names when I submit a URL like http://www.sciencemag.org/content/210/4472/903.short ?

[michaelq]

Sciencemag.org uses a special metatag for authors (citation_author). I'm not sure how common this is, but I will add logic to check these. Then SpeedCite would properly cite the author.

[amadeusw]

IEEE references would be fantastic!

I don't think the ISBN lookup works correctly. Typing in 9781405347587 or 978-1405347587 returns a book with ISBN 0-9690745-2-2

I'd be looking forward to upgraded version with IEEE but I just graduated, ha!

[michaelq]

Wow, I didn't realize IEEE had their own citation format.

Amazon has the ISBN 9781405347587. The only other google result for this is your comment, which Google seems to have already indexed :)

Since Google Books doesn't have that ISBN, I would need 1) fail gracefully instead of giving a citation for the wrong book and 2) have a fallback API. I'm working on both of these. Thanks!

[zmguy]

I think it's interesting the URL citation does not actually include the URL. It seems like the title of the article and the domain. Why is the exact URL of the resource is not important?

[michaelq]

I could certainly include it, but doing so is not usually required for MLA, APA or Chicago citations, and it would in many cases, make the citation really long.

[jonlucc]

An ISBN for a book shows up as a web resource in Google Books. Is there a way to get it to just be the book?

[michaelq]

From the ISBN alone, it's difficult to differentiate between an electronic book (such as one retrieved by Google Books) and a physical one. Would it be helpful to add a switch allowing you to specify whether you want electronic book citations or print book citations?

[RankingMember]

Damn, this is awesome. I would've loved something like this back in school. I did them manually.

[jwb119]

Awesome job. Would be really cool to see something like this for legal citations as well.

[michaelq]

If you could link me to an example of a typical legal citation you would use, I can look into it.

[denzil_correa]

You should introduce a Bibtex format too if you have to rope in the academia crowd.

[yongparkk]

This is really neat. Wish I had this during my high school/college years.

[sperling75]

Cool, can I see an example ?

[michaelq]

Sure. Any DOI you pull off of Google scholar should work. Same with ISBNs off the back of any book you have lying around. And it works with most news sites. http://www.speedcite.com/?q=http://www.usatoday.com/story/ne...

[acbart]

What does this offer over using Google Scholar's citations?

[michaelq]

If you already have a DOI on your clipboard or are copying it from your text editor, it would save you a few clicks and page loads.

[rubious_dan]

I used KnightCite in college, this would have been great.

[sperling75]

Very cool. Would have saved me a ton of time.