Using the Publication Assistant

The Publication Assistant is a floating window that shows you a compact view of the contents of your Citavi project while you write your paper. By double-clicking you can directly insert a placeholder for a citation, a complete quotation and its placeholder, or a thought into an open Writer document.

hmtoggle_plus1 Anatomy of a Placeholder

A placeholder consists of a Short text that identifies the reference, enclosed in braces { }. The placeholder text can contain several kinds of identifying information that can be used alone or in combination:

  • Year
  • Author
  • Words from the short title
  • Sequence number

For example, a placeholder for the reference "Normal, Donald A: The Design of Everyday Things. New York 2002." could be:

{Norman 2002 #142}

The sequence number is the unique identifier for each individual reference in a project, and is shown in the status bar at the bottom of the Citavi window. When you use the sequence number in a placeholder, the other identifying information is ignored because the sequence number positively identifies a reference. This allows Citavi to distinguish between two publications by the same author written in the same year. For example, from {Miller 2010 #50} and {Miller 2010 #72} Citavi can format the references as (Miller 2010a) and (Miller 2010b).

Page numbers for a quotation are inserted with colon after the sequence number:

{Luhmann 1997 #138:97-98}

hmtoggle_plus1 Tabs in the Publication Assistant

To open the Publication Assistant, on the Citation menu, click Publication Assistant. The Publication Assistant has two tabs: References and Knowledge items.

  • The References tab shows you all the refernces in the current project. On the View menu, you can set whether you wan to view the references by short titles, by titles, by categories, or  by keywords. You can also select whether to display sequence numbers or not.
    To quickly find a reference, type letters corresponding to the first few letters in the title or author's name in the Select field. You can cancel this selection by clicking on the crossed out lasso to the right of the search box.
    Click  Insert in Writer to insert a placeholder for the selected reference in the open Writer document.
  • The Knowledge tab shows you all the quotations and thoughts in the current project. On the View menu you can set whether you want to view the references by core statements, by titles, by categories, or  by keywords. We recommend the category view so that you can easily find and insert your collected knowledge items into the corresponding section of your publication.
    To quickly find a particular quotation, type letters corresponding to the first few letters of the core statement in the Filter  field. You can cancel this selection by clicking on the crossed out lasso to the right of the search box.
    Click  Insert in Writer  to insert the selected quotation (and a placeholder for its source) or thought in the open Writer document.