Journal Issues

When adding entire issues of a journal, there are three different cases to consider:

Special Issue of a Journal

Special issues, like edited books, consist solely of contributions pertaining to a particular subject. If this characteristic is met, you should add the issue as a Special issue. Additional characteristics of special issues may include the following:

• The editor of the issue is not the usual editor or editorial team.
• The issue follows separate page numbering.
• The issue has its own ISBN number (in addition to the ISSN number, which identifies the periodical).

However, like edited books, a special issue or supplement is not normally cited directly. It is customary to cite the specific contribution in the special issue, including the author of the contribution and the page numbers. For this information, use the Contribution reference type.

Issue of a Journal

In Citavi an issue of a periodical should not be added as an individual reference. Even if the issue deals with one specific topic, you should instead add its individual articles or other texts such as columns or reviews.

Some issues of a periodical appear to be special issues, but in fact are normal issues which simply have one topic highlighted on the cover. These issues follow the regular pagination of the journal and do not have a special editor. Treat these as ordinary journals and add the contributions using the regular Journal article reference type.

Gray Areas

Some popular magazines publish issues dedicated to specific topics. Generally, these are unsuitable for use in scholarly works because they are not peer-reviewed. For this reason, there is no reference type in Citavi intended for these references.

Hint

In Citavi it's not possible to automatically add information for a special issue using the ISSN. If you want to add the ISSN, you can do so by right-clicking the journal name and then clicking Edit.