Short Titles, Citations, and Citation Keys

Short titles help identify a reference in a Citavi project

Every new reference you enter in Citavi is given a short title used to identify it within a project. The Citavi short title is not intended for use in your formatted paper.

Citavi automatically generates a short title for every reference, but you can change it at any time. Citavi creates the short title following this model: Bawden 2001 – Information and digital literacies. The last name is first, followed by the year of publication, then a dash, and then the first few words of the title. To change the short title, you can double-click it, or you can hover the mouse pointer over the short title that appears just below the toolbar. Or press Alt+Ctrl+S.

In the window that opens, type the new short title and then click OK.

In-text Citations are Used to Identify a Reference Cited in a Publication

Citations are used in your paper to cite references whose full bibliographic information is given in the bibliography. Typical in-text citations might look like the following, depending on the style you are using: (Bawden 2013) or [23].

Citation Keys Allow you to Display a Cited Reference in a Shortened Form

There are two reasons why you might use citation keys:

• In the humanities and social sciences, some citation styles require a full footnote citation for the first mention of a work. The second time a work is cited, a Shortened form of the title is used. Citavi can make a suggestion, for example the first two words leaving out any articles, but you still should check the citation keys and edit them if necessary, since Citavi is unable to tell what the most important words in the title are. The entire footnote for the repeated citation might also include the last name of the author, the year, and the quoted pages in addition to the citation key: Miller et al., Home economics, 1954, S. 14-15
• Certain citation styles in the fields of mathematics and computer science require an abbreviated citation key for in-text citations. For example, this type of citation key might consist of the first letters of the last names of the first three authors and a two-digit year: [MiScWe09].

For both of these types of citation styles, Citavi offers the Citation Key feature. In the chapter Customizing citation keys you can learn more.