Citation Guide (2025)

References in Pleiades Places, Names, Locations and Connections

The primary purpose of a reference in Pleiades is to connect the reader, as quickly and efficiently as possible, with another work that addresses the Pleiades place, name, location, or connection to which it is attached. To that end, the citation process has been automated as much as possible, while still providing editorial source control and structure for the bibliographic data in question. Guidelines for constructing references to particular types of works and their components follows. There is a separate, illustrated step-by-step guide on "How to Add a New Reference".

References (bibliographic citations) in Pleiades are formed by linking to a work-level bibliographic record in the Pleiades Zotero Library. Making this link and selecting the "fetch Zotero" button on the references form automatically populates these fields:

• The "Short Title" field will be automatically filled with the preferred short title previously assigned by the editors in the Zotero library;
• A full, formatted reference for the identified work will be created and inserted in the "Formatted Citation" field; and
• A link to the full work (if included in the Zotero record) will be written into the "Access URI" field.

Users must then manually add or change the following fields (as necessary and possible):

• Citation type
  i.e., the reason for citing the work in question (see our separate "Citation Types" document for details)
• Citation detail
  i.e., subordinate page or paragraph range; entry title, lemma, or number; canonical citation range; author names for a cited article in an encyclopedic work
• Access URI (overwriting the automatic link to the work itself if appropriate)
  i.e., web link to an online version of the work cited. If that is not available, for books a link to the Worldcat entry is substituted.

Notes about Access URIs:

When citing a digital work or section thereof online, please be mindful of the following suggestions for the contents of the "Access URI" field:

• When you have a choice of linking directly to a PDF file containing the work or to a "landing page" that contains bibliographic information and a link to the PDF, please use the URI for the landing page.
• Although it may be necessary to use a library proxy server or other mechanism to access a work or its landing page, please remove your institution's modifications to the URI you put in the "access URI" field. For example, instead of a link like "https://www-cambridge-org.proxy.library.nyu.edu/core/journals/anatolian-studies/article/sanctuary-of-the-god-eurymedon-at-tymbriada-in-pisidia/2653CF020755D2F43E6E49092E29F552" use "https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/anatolian-studies/article/abs/sanctuary-of-the-god-eurymedon-at-tymbriada-in-pisidia/2653CF020755D2F43E6E49092E29F552". 
• When you have the choice between a URI constructed from a Digital Object Identifier (DOI; like "https://doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e804170") or one that uses a publisher's or distributor's own web domain (like "https://referenceworks.brill.com/display/entries/NPOE/e804170.xml"), use the one built from the DOI. Note that you will have to search in the page for this version of the link, rather than copying it from your browser's location bar. 

Articles in Journals, Magazines, Newspapers, Blogs, etc.

An individual journal article is considered a bibliographic work and therefore must have a corresponding entry in the Zotero library before it can be cited in a reference.

If only a portion of the article is relevant, include appropriate information (e.g., a page range) in the "citation detail" field; otherwise, that field can be left blank.

Entries in Dictionaries and Encyclopedic Works

Individual entries in dictionaries and encyclopedic works are not separately entered in the Zotero library, but there must be a Zotero entry for the entire containing work before an article can be cited in a reference.

In the "citation detail" field, enter the title or lemma for the individual entry. For example:

• For an article in the Italian-language Wikipedia, use a citation detail like "Rocca della Verruca" (i.e., the name of the encyclopedia entry)

If the cited entry is individually authored and credited, include author(s) (initials + last names) in parentheses following the title or lemma. For example:

• For an article in Brill's New Pauly, use a citation detail like "Cinolis (C. Marek)" (i.e., the name of the entry plus the entry's author)

Books and Monographic Multi-Volume Works

To cite an entire book or multi-volume work by a single author or group author consistent throughout (i.e., a "monograph"), link and fetch the book's corresponding Zotero record and leave the "citation detail" field empty.

To cite an arbitrary page range in such a book, include the page range (and volume number, if necessary) in the "citation detail" field. To cite one or more chapters within such a book, add the volume number (if appropriate), chapter number(s), chapter name(s) (if appropriate) and page range(s) to the "citation detail" field. You may spell out or use widely understood abbreviations for words like "pages" or "volume", as you prefer.

Collected/Edited Volumes and Conference Proceedings

To cite the work in its entirety, follow the guidance for Books and Monographic Multi-Volume Works.

To cite a single, authored chapter, paper, article, or section, follow the guidance for Articles.

Modern Gazetteers, Atlases, Maps and Databases

To cite the work in its entirety, follow the guidance for Books and Monographic Multi-Volume Works.

To cite a single chapter, section or map in its entirety, follow the guidance for either Articles or Entries in Dictionaries and Encyclopedic Works as seems easiest and most effective.

To cite a single toponym, label, place entry, or database record, follow the guidance for Entries in Dictionaries and Encyclopedic Works, taking care to include as many of the following identification components in the "citation detail" as possible, in increasingly specific hierarchical order: map number, grid square, label, database/gazetteer entry number, lemma, title, etc. NB: you may have to extract the entry/item number from an HTTP(S) URI. For example:

• Barrington Atlas citation detail: "91 A2 Zenobia"
• GeoNames citation detail: "162557: Zalābīyah"
• Trismegistos citation detail: "Geo 37591: Zenobia (Halabiyya)"
• Vici.org citation detail: "11470: Zenobia"
• Wikidata citation detail: "Halabiye (Q903630)"

For pre-modern works (e.g., the Peutinger Map), see Primary Sources.

Primary Sources

Whenever a modern edition or published facsimile of a manuscript exists, Pleiades cites that specific edition. Construct the reference by importing the corresponding entry from the Zotero library as you would for the secondary references described in the other sections of this document

In the citation detail field, include necessary specifics by capturing the canonical reference (if same is used in the edition), as well as the primary reference scheme deployed in that edition (these may be the same). It may be helpful, especially when multiple editions exist, but there is no accepted canonical reference scheme, to include page numbers for the modern edition as well. For example:

• A reference to a passage in Meineke's edition of Strabo hosted at Perseus would use the automatically generated short title "Str. (Meineke: Perseus)" and the citation detail "10.2.4".
• A reference to a passage in Renou's edition of the "Indika" section of Ptolemy's Geography as hosted by the Internet Archive would use the automatically generated short title "Ptol. (Renou; IA)" and the citation detail "7.1.18, 30 (page 10)".
• A reference to a map label in Richard Talbert's online database of the Peutinger Map as hosted by Cambridge University Press would use the automatically generated short title "TP (Talbert: CUP)" and the citation detail "5A5 (Talbert 1691)".

Other Websites and Web Pages

Choose a scheme from among those listed on this page that seems most appropriate to you. Remember, the primary purpose of the reference is to help users find the reference in question and to give credit where credit is due when using external resources, so be sure to import from Zotero a record for the website, document, or section and then fill out the "citation detail" and "access URI" fields in an informative way.