Template talk:Cite Q

Access indicator

While we're at it @Pigsonthewing:, could you poke the bear over at Wikidata to support Template:Cite journal#Access indicator for named identifiers, i.e. |bibcode-access=free, |doi-access=free, |jstor-access=free, |ssrn-access=free, and the others so we don't have to manually set them on enwiki? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:48, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

You'd need d:Wikidata:Property proposal for that; LMK if you'd like me to look over drafts.

You seem to have missed my questions, above, BTW. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits; 15:25, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

Sorry, but that form is completely unintelligible. It's a simple proposal, and 20 mins in I'm not even halfway in the fields and I have no idea what I'm even answering. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:35, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

I'll do one for Bibcode and you can replicate for the rest. I'll need at least three examples with the relevant values, please.

You still overlooked my questions. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits; 15:39, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

I made this https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata_talk:Property_proposal#free_access_parameters . If you want bibcode examples, here are some. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:47, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

No, I need example Wikidata items for cited works with the relevant bibcode access values.

Still no answer to my questions. Why is that? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits; 15:57, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

What questions? And I don't know how to browse Wikidata or search it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:12, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

The ones immediately beneath and in reply to your post starting "The vast majority of DOIs are written in lowercase..." Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits; 16:13, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

I don't know. Above my paygrade. Don't really care either. Cite journal and others could normalize them to lowercase too I suppose. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:15, 23 August 2026 (UTC)

I wonder if we couldn't instead use online access status (P6954) as a qualifier of the various identifiers instead, and if the qualifier is not present we can assume a default value, such as free to read (Q24707952) or possibly open access (Q232932) as appropriate? For instance, I added a qualifier to the Bibcode property on the PLoS article "A higher level classification of all living organisms (Q19858624)" which we could pick up easily at the point Cite Q fetches the identifiers. As usual, it would then depend on the data in Wikidata being correct, but that is after all the point really. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 11:15, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, but that's an abuse of bibcode access. That's just a link to the PLOS article. Bibcode-access=free should be for those articles hosted on the ADSABS database (see https://i.gyazo.com/9fafefac3342f199153e17c68823e280.png), e.g. Bibcode:1980JApA....1..189G Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:30, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

So, maybe the example one? "No detectable supernova remnant near the pulsar PSR 1930 + 22 (Q68550452)" — Jonathanischoice (talk) 12:08, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Yes that would be a better example. The DOI is paywalled, but the Bibcode isn't. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:15, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

I made , this time with a DOI and a JSTOR... That seems generally correct, so if that's all cool and the gang with the wikidata folks, the rest should be dealt with (mostly) automation, and importing when present Wikipedia values. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:25, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

We could implement some defaults in Cite Q for when a qualifier is absent, e.g. usually JSTOR is subscription only, DOI is free to read at least the abstract, Arxiv is free to read, and so on. Jonathanischoice (talk) 13:17, 27 August 2026 (UTC)

Nothing should be assumed unless it can be guaranteed to be correct. SSRNs are usually free, but are sometimes paywalled. JSTOR are often free, but mostly paywalled. DOIs are mostly paywalled but often free.

If it's not known, don't assume. No information is better than a lie. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:31, 29 August 2026 (UTC)

Once the publication improvements are in, I'll start work on this using some example online access status (P6954) qualifiers on (DOI, bibcode, et al.) identifiers, and use a separate test cases page since it's getting too large. Then I assume we can separately discuss on WD doing some sort of bulk update or bot action to add the qualifiers where they exist in enwiki. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 22:58, 11 September 2026 (UTC)

Herewith a first cut, that looks up online access status (P6954) qualifiers on DOI, Bibcode, JSTOR, hdl, OSTI, SSRN and S2cid and adds the corresponding |xxx-access=free if found. I've also modified the {{erratum}} and {{retracted}} template calls to look up the same qualifiers. Here's an article from the test cases that has a free access SSRN, and another with free DOI in the retracted template. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 09:49, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Let me know your comments, @Trappist the monk, @Headbomb, @Pigsonthewing; if I don't hear anything I'll push this out in a couple of days' time. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 22:59, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

Seems to work. On erratums and on main citations. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:05, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

I concur; seems to work correctly. Off topic somewhat, but why is the erratum, retracted rendering in bold font? Does this usage comply with MOS:BOLD?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 21:47, 15 September 2026 (UTC)

Okay, I've also got it to check for free DOI registrants from the CS1 config as well. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 02:59, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

 Done — Jonathanischoice (talk) 03:08, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

Line 352: Why require()?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 13:14, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

So we don't load it every invocation, only when it needs to; see also lines 10-11. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 20:00, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

You might want to review that claim. Written as it is, Module:Cite Q/sandbox will load Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration three times for the four {{cite Q/sandbox}} templates in this topic. Remember that Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration is a data module. Shouldn't you use mw.loadData()?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:05, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

Noted, updated per. (update) Oh - would the CS1/config data module be loaded once per page, or per each Cite Q invocation? — Jonathanischoice (talk) 23:47, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

As I understand it, the first cs1|2 or {{cite q}} template to be processed will load Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration. Subsequent cs1|2 or {{cite q}} templates will not reload ~/Configuration. require ('Module:Citation/CS1/Configuration') will always load ~/Configuration for each invocation of a module with that code.

—Trappist the monk (talk) 16:44, 17 September 2026 (UTC)

I've deployed this live just now, loads with mw.loadData at the top. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 21:38, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

References

Invisible testcase diffs are URL encoding in Z39.88

The diffs in the test cases are due to URL encoding differences in the OpenURL span (look for it using the span.Z3988 CSS selector) where the title has characters that need URL encoding, e.g. a single-quote or ampersand, e.g. Thom%26%2339%3Bs+Irish+Who%26%2339%3Bs+Who in the live code (left) vs. Thom%27s+Irish+Who%27s+Who on the right (sandbox). Which is odd, because there aren't any code differences I can see in the sandbox that would do that, and I've tried purging the cache etc. It's pretty minor, but noting here for the record. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 01:10, 2 September 2026 (UTC)

Don't display ISSNs

I agree with @Headbomb that we shouldn't be displaying ISSNs for any Wikidata item that isn't an actual instance of (P31) journal, book series or other periodical, which would be an odd thing to cite anyway. Identifiers for articles, papers, chapters etc. should be to the item itself, not the item within which it is contained or published. Disabling issn in the sandbox config works, unless someone has added a value for ISSN (P236) to the WD article item. Thoughts? — Jonathanischoice (talk) 23:55, 3 September 2026 (UTC)

I disagree, I think ISSNs should be included. They're useful for keeping track of different publications with the same name, publications without Wikipedia articles, etc. Much more useful than an s2c id, which is totally useless.

I do wish there was a way to selectively not display certain IDs. Like the s2cid. PARAKANYAA (talk) 19:03, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

If you have the DOI (or Bibcode, or jstor or whatever), you don't need the ISSN. s2cid should only be presented when there's a downloadable PDF available. That can be filtered if |s2cid-access=free isn't present. Or whatever the Wikidata equivalent is. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:43, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

You don't "need" anything, even the DOI. They are useful.

s2cid should only be presented when there's a downloadable PDF available and Wikidata does not know that. If there is an s2cid this template will link it, including the 99% of the time when there is no pdf. PARAKANYAA (talk) 00:38, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

Are there cases where the only way to identify a journal article is by the ISSN? That seems unlikely. I don't think we need to show the ISSN if there's DOI, PMID, ADS bibcode, JSTOR et al. which identify the article itself. I could make it so that it only shows the ISSN if 1. it's an article of some kind (i.e. not a book etc.) and 2. there are no other article identifiers, would that make sense? — Jonathanischoice (talk) 23:37, 9 September 2026 (UTC)

The reliability of journal articles depends on the journal, and not every journal article has a DOI, so identifying the journal is of course relevant to that. Especially when you're dealing with a case where there are multiple journals that have very similar names. For the same reason that location= and publisher= are specified with books, for one (though obviously the case is a bit different here)

This sort of ties into the reason I never use this template, even though I make a wikidata item for most journal articles I cite, which is that the usage of this template gives you no way to select which identifiers are/aren't important, which is always context dependent. PARAKANYAA (talk) 00:44, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

So is that a "yes"? Jonathanischoice (talk) 02:29, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

 Done Maybe — Jonathanischoice (talk) 04:24, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

Hmm... @PARAKANYAA: not quite done. I've modified the sandbox so it displays ISSN in news and journal articles when there are no other article IDs (DOI, bibcode, PMID etc.) Can you have a look at the test case differences and see what you think? If you have some good examples of your usage, feel free to add them to the test cases, or list them here. Cheers, Jonathanischoice (talk) 21:31, 16 September 2026 (UTC)

 Done, displays ISSN if there are no article IDs found. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 11:48, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Handle expressions of concern

First up, I've put up a Wikidata property proposal at d:Wikidata:Property proposal/has expression of concern, which will allow us to automatically show notices using {{Expression of concern}} the same way we do for errata and retractions; feel free to comment on there to get that moving. Once that's in, it will be a simple matter to add it at the Cite Q end. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 00:21, 7 September 2026 (UTC)

Now created: ‎has expression of concern (P14891). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits; 10:30, 19 September 2026 (UTC)

When present the {{Expression of concern}} template is now invoked in the sandbox, see Template:Cite Q/testcases#Expression of concern notices. For an intentional citation, use |eoc-intentional=yes with Cite Q which passes |intentional= to the template. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 23:30, 19 September 2026 (UTC)

If there are no objections, I'll push this through with the above ISSN tweak in a day or so; I'll push the CS1 config load tweak now. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 21:32, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

Re-asking my unanswered question: why is the erratum, retracted, and now eoc, rendering in bold font? Does this usage comply with MOS:BOLD?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 22:02, 20 September 2026 (UTC)

No idea. This question would be better asked at the talk pages of the {{retracted}}, {{erratum}}, and {{expression of concern}} templates, since Cite Q is simply passing parameters to them and appending the rendered output. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 03:29, 21 September 2026 (UTC)

 Done — Jonathanischoice (talk) 11:49, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

how to cite q LNCS

Looking at

• Sidney Tsang; Yun Sing Koh; Gillian Dobbie (2011). "RP-Tree: Rare Pattern Tree Mining". Lecture Notes in Computer Science: 277–288. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-23544-3_21. Wikidata Q125185206.

This should be cited as

• Tsang, Sidney; Koh, Yun Sing; Dobbie, Gillian (2011). "RP-Tree: Rare Pattern Tree Mining". In Cuzzocrea, A.; Dayal, U. (eds.). Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Vol. 6862. pp. 277–288. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-23544-3_21. ISBN 978-3-642-23543-6.

I don't know how to map those in Wikidata. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:03, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

See Template:Cite Q#To do list:

Ability to cite chapters, per Template talk:Cite Q#Cite Q chapter broken

-- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits; 16:07, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

The problem is Lecture Notes in Computer Science is a book series, not a book. The published in (P1433) for the RP-Tree article/chapter should point at a conference proceedings book item, Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery (there are a few already, but none for the 2011 conference) which is itself part of the series (P179) LNCS. Then, the changes I just added should pick it up and do the right thing. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 20:41, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

The book is "Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery" cite conference is a blight, please don't use it for cite q. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:27, 13 September 2026 (UTC)

That's not what I'm suggesting. I'm saying there needs to be an item created (if there isn't one already) for the 2011 conference proceedings book, instance of (P31) both version, edition or translation (Q3331189) and conference proceedings (Q1143604), bearing the above ISBN, ideally using is proceedings from (P4745) to link to a 2011 conference item, which is part of the series (P179): International Conference on Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery (Q105694634). Similar to this book, for the 2004 conference: Data Warehousing and Knowledge Discovery, 6th International Conference, DaWaK 2004, Zaragoza, Spain, September 1-3, 2004, Proceedings (Q135237891).

Here's a different example, of an article published in another conference proceedings, also part of LNCS. Note it uses published in (P1433) to a conference proceedings book, which is part of the series (P179) LNCS. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 01:13, 14 September 2026 (UTC)

References

Displaying last name, first name(s) for authors, editors, translators

This is a fairly chunky bit of work that I've had bubbling away for the last few days while waiting for other stuff to leave the sandbox. This change tries to fetch family name (P734) and given name (P735) values on any author (P50), editor (P98), or translator (P655) properties, and tries to look up any author last names (P9688) and author given names (P9687) qualifiers on author name string (P2093) properties. If none are found (both given and family names must be present) then it falls back to the current behaviour of displaying the author name string or object named as (P1932) value. Clearly there will be a corner cases and default behaviours to iron out. Just one I stumbled on is citing an author using a pen name, such as Emily Jenkins, who writes novels as E. Lockhart. I imagine there must be many other things to consider. I also think it might be prudent to add a parameter called something like |first-name-style=, which controls how the first names are presented, e.g. in full (Doe, John Quentin), initials only (Doe, J. Q.), without dots (Doe, JQ), and so on. Thoughts and discussion here would be welcome. — Jonathanischoice (talk) 12:23, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Jonathanischoice Thanks for this work. I really appreciate this as otherwise I have to manually edit the CiteQ citation to ensure this "last name, first name" happens. I also agree with adding a parameter which can control how first names are presented although I admit I'm more likely to default to the default presentation method of last name, first name - whether the first name is full or just the initials. Ambrosia10 (talk) 18:02, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

That’s a great initiative. That’s the one thing that really annoys me about CiteQ; would be good to get this under control. Schwede66 19:46, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

So pleased you are doing this work @Jonathanischoice! One of the things that occasionally annoyed me about the default picking up of 'object named as' for authors was the publications where an author name string was given in all caps, which looks horrible on Wikipedia, but as it was the original form of the name I didn't want to override the data in Wikidata to force the change on Wikipedia. But I can see that adding given and family names on Wikidata will provide a fix for that, which is great (maybe there were other ways, I never found them)! DrThneed (talk) 21:12, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

I too want to express my gratitude. I’d like to help, but I haven’t coded in close to a decade, and without an IDE with debugger I’ll just annoy and slow you down. Very happy to help design though 😃. Elrondil (talk) 22:53, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

References

Jonathanischoice (talk) 12:23, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Consider WikiCite

WikiCite is the Wikidata effort to index citations.

For lots of reasons, this Template:Cite Q project is great as its own English Wikipedia project, and the overall concept of managing and using citations is broad enough that no one sees or needs to see all the use cases. That said, I want to invite anyone here who is interested to look at some developments.

• Wikidata is switching to a new blackend, Qlever. Lots of people have written about this. Here is my blurb - d:Wikidata_talk:WikiCite#Adoption_of_Qlever
• Multiple people at Internet Archive are recently even more committed to supporting Wikipedia in managing citations. meta:InternetArchiveBot is the flagship project of the many parts of this
• There are some other developments associated with Internet Archive that I posted at d:Wikidata_talk:WikiCite#WikiCite/ReCite
• Not from Internet Archive, but Internet Archive adjacent and connected to my school, Harej is proposing a modest but impactful short term infrastructure project at meta:Wikimedia CH/Grant apply/The Wikipedia Citations Database

Lastly, the telegram WikiCite channel has about 250 participants. If anyone wants to chat generally, message me on telegram (bluerasberry) and I can add you to the group.

I do not have any particular news or ask here, but I saw the ongoing development here, and there is unusually active development in other directions right now, so I thought I would share some pointers to other parts. Bluerasberry (talk) 13:39, 22 September 2026 (UTC)

Thank you; those are all good initiatives. Just a couple of points to note, regarding "great as its own English Wikipedia project":

• Cite Q was conceived and introduced as part of WikiCite
• while development work is done here, it has always been the intention that the template should be shared with other projects; over 80 of which already use it (and will need re-syncing once the current development spurt leads to a stable version (if not now!)—the sooner we have a centralised repository for templates and modules, the better).

-- Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits; 14:07, 22 September 2026 (UTC)