Customizing Citation Keys

Some citation styles are particularly demanding. In one example, the style calls for an in-text citation key comprised of:

The first three letters of the author's last name if there is one author, the first two letters of the authors' last names if there are two authors, or the first letter of the first three authors' last names if there are three or more authors and the year. You need to cite Smith 2000, Jackson and White 2002, and Burroughs, Kim, and Gonzales 2010, producing [Smi2000], [JaWh2002], and [BKG2010], respectively.
In another example, the style requires a full citation on the first citation, but only the first two words of the title on subsequent citation: First citation: Strong, D. M., Y. W. Lee, and R. Y. Wang. 1997. 10 Potholes in the Road to Information Quality. Computer IEEE 30, no. 8:38–41. Subsequent citation: Strong, 10 Potholes, 41–44..

For these styles, the notes in Citavi about the citation style will specify that you need to turn on Citation key support and tells you how to configure the citation key template.

When creating your own styles, citation keys can be a powerful tool to implement unusual requirements. The citation key is available as a component in the citation style editor and can thus be combined with any other components. In the first example, the entire in-text key could be simply the citation key. In the second example, only the first two words of the title would be in the citation key, which would then be combined with the Author and Quotation page range components to create the in-text citation.

Generating Citation Keys

On the Tools menu, click Options. Then, on the General tab, select the Citation key support checkbox. Citavi will offer to generate citation keys for each reference.
You can edit an automatically-generated citation key at any time.

Customizing Citation Key Templates

On the Tools menu, click Options. On the General tab, click Customize next to the selected Citation key support checkbox.
To change the default template for all reference types, click Default.
Make the changes you want. You can change what fields are used to build the key, how they are formatted, the punctuation used, and conditional exceptions.
If you need certain reference types to have special citation keys, you can define additional templates for each of them. Click Add template for reference type and then configure the template.
When you are finished making changes, click OK. Citavi asks what you want to do with existing citation keys.

Exporting Citation Key Templates

You can save a citation key template as a file to share with others or to make it easy to move to another computer.

On the Tools menu, click Options. On the General tab, click Customize next to the selected Citation key support checkbox.
Customize the citation key template..
Click Export and save the citation key template (.ckd) file.

Importing Citation Key Templates

If you have a citation key template file, you can import it so you don't have to manually configure the template..

On the Tools menu, click Options. On the General tab, click Customize next to the selected Citation key support checkbox.
Click Import and select the citation key template (.ckd) file. Click OK. Citavi asks what you want to do with existing citation keys..