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CiteKit
Open Reference Library

Citation Schema Generator

The Citation Schema Generator turns Source Metadata into Citation Schema: machine-readable Schema.org JSON-LD that describes a cited Source and, when needed, the relationship between that Source and the page citing it.

Human-readable Citations and Bibliographies are designed for readers. Citation Schema provides a machine-readable representation of the same underlying Source information for systems that process structured data.

What Citation Schema does

A visible Citation on a page is formatted for people. Citation Schema expresses the underlying Source and citation relationship as structured data.

Depending on the Source Metadata available, the JSON-LD can identify information such as:

  • the type of Source being described
  • the Source title
  • the author or authors
  • the publication date
  • the publication or container it belongs to
  • identifiers such as a DOI
  • the Source URL
  • the relationship between a publishing page and a Source it cites

Structured data can make these relationships explicit to systems that understand Schema.org. It does not guarantee search rankings, rich results, AI attribution, or any particular treatment by a search engine or language model.

Generate Citation Schema from a Source or Reference

Enter or retrieve Source information using a supported input, or work from a Reference already available in your Reference Library. The generator uses the available Source Metadata to produce Schema.org JSON-LD.

A Reference is the structured CiteKit record representing a Source. Citation Schema is one of the machine-readable publishing outputs that can be generated from that structured Reference data.

The relationship is:

Source → Reference → Citation Schema

Example output

For a journal article, the generated JSON-LD may look like this:

{
  “@context”: “https://schema.org”,
  “@type”: “ScholarlyArticle”,
  “headline”: “Climate sensitivity in the Arctic”,
  “author”: {
    “@type”: “Person”,
    “name”: “Brown, Bob”
  },
  “datePublished”: “2024”,
  “isPartOf”: {
    “@type”: “Periodical”,
    “name”: “Journal of WTF”
  },
  “identifier”: “10.1000/example”,
  “url”: “https://example.com/article”
}

Schema.org types

The Schema.org type can vary with the Source Type and available Source Metadata. The generator can represent Sources using types such as:

  • Journal article → ScholarlyArticle
  • Book → Book
  • Book chapter → Chapter, with isPartOf identifying the parent work when available
  • News article → NewsArticle
  • Web page → WebPage
  • YouTube video → VideoObject
  • Other Source Types → an appropriate CreativeWork representation when a more specific type is not available

If the automatically selected type does not match the Source, you can choose the appropriate type before using the generated markup.

Two output modes

The generator supports two ways of structuring the output depending on where the Citation Schema will be used.

Standalone

Standalone output describes one Source as its own Schema.org entity. Use this when you need a self-contained JSON-LD representation of that Source.

Citation array

Citation array output places the cited Source inside a parent work’s citation property. Use this when you want the structured data for a page or article to explicitly identify the Sources it cites.

{
  “@context”: “https://schema.org”,
  “@type”: “Article”,
  “headline”: “My blog post”,
  “citation”: [
    {
      “@type”: “ScholarlyArticle”,
      “headline”: “Climate sensitivity in the Arctic”,
      “author”: “Brown, Bob”,
      “datePublished”: “2024”,
      “identifier”: “10.1000/example”
    }
  ]
}

Standalone mode describes the cited Source itself. Citation-array mode expresses the citation relationship inside the structured data for the work doing the citing.

Where to place the JSON-LD

JSON-LD is normally added inside a <script type="application/ld+json"> element in the page’s HTML. It can be placed in the document head or body as long as the final page source contains valid JSON-LD.

How you add it depends on the publishing system you use. The Citation Schema Generator produces the markup; it does not install or publish the markup to your website for you.

Validate the generated markup

After adding Citation Schema to a page, validate the final markup before relying on it.

  • Schema.org Validator — checks the structured data against the Schema.org vocabulary and is useful for validating the Citation Schema itself.
  • Search-engine testing tools — can be useful when the page also contains structured data associated with features supported by a particular search engine.

Validation confirms that the structured data can be parsed and that its vocabulary is being used correctly. It does not guarantee a particular search result, ranking, or presentation.

What Citation Schema is not

Citation Schema is not a citation style. It does not control whether a visible Citation appears in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver, AMA, or another human-readable format.

That distinction is important:

  • Citation and Bibliography formatting → human-readable publishing output
  • Citation Schema → machine-readable Schema.org JSON-LD

If you need a visible formatted Citation, use the Citation Generator. If you need a formatted collection of References, use the Bibliography Generator.

What this tool doesn’t do

  • It doesn’t publish the JSON-LD to your site. The generator produces the markup; you decide where and how to add it to the page.
  • It doesn’t guarantee search features or rankings. Citation Schema provides machine-readable information, but search engines decide how structured data is interpreted and used.
  • It doesn’t prove that a Source is accurate. Citation Schema represents the Source Metadata supplied to it. Incorrect metadata produces an incorrect representation.
  • It doesn’t replace the visible Citation or Bibliography. Citation Schema is a machine-readable layer that can accompany human-readable citation output.

How it fits into Reference Manager for Web

Reference Manager for Web keeps the reusable Reference separate from the outputs generated from it. That means the same structured Reference can support different publishing needs without becoming locked to a single format.

Source
↓ represented by
Reference
↓ can generate
Citation · Bibliography Entry · Citation Schema

The Reference Library retains the reusable References. Citation Schema is one possible output from those References.

What’s next