Citations, References and Footnotes in HTML Documents‏

Previously, the ways for indicating citations, references and footnotes in HTML have been numerous with combinations of text strings and HTML formatting.  Mechanically obtaining the interconnectivity between web documents, for example for information search and retrieval or content discovery purposes, as seen at the arXiv and CiteSeerX projects, has required complex document and text processing to reobtain the structure from the indicated permutations of text and formatting.  By introducing a <reference/> element, possibly <footnote/> element, and extending the attributes on the <cite/> element, a robust structural system for citations, references and footnotes can exist for HTML documents.

An example is provided to illustrate the differences in the presentation layer rendering for the same structural element, a referenced material:

APA style
Reference. (2011, August 22). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 18:11, August 25, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reference&oldid=446196654

MLA style
Wikipedia contributors. “Reference.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 22 Aug. 2011. Web. 25 Aug. 2011.

MHRA style
Wikipedia contributors, ‘Reference’, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 22 August 2011, 19:17 UTC, <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reference&oldid=446196654> [accessed 25 August 2011]

Chicago style
Wikipedia contributors, “Reference,” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reference&oldid=446196654 (accessed August 25, 2011).

CBE/CSE style
Wikipedia contributors. Reference [Internet]. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia; 2011 Aug 22, 19:17 UTC [cited 2011 Aug 25]. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reference&oldid=446196654.

Bluebook style
Reference, http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reference&oldid=446196654 (last visited Aug. 25, 2011).

Bluebook: Harvard JOLT style
Wikipedia, Reference, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference (optional description here) (as of Aug. 25, 2011, 18:11 GMT).

AMA style
Wikipedia contributors. Reference. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. August 22, 2011, 19:17 UTC. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reference&oldid=446196654. Accessed August 25, 2011.

We can see from the BibTeX representation that the different notations have a common structure:

BibTeX entry
@misc{ wiki:xxx,
author = “Wikipedia”,
title = “Reference — Wikipedia{,} The Free Encyclopedia”,
year = “2011″,
url = “http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Reference&oldid=446196654“,
note = “[Online; accessed 25-August-2011]“
}

A robust model for materials, a metadata model, can be devised such that its structural elements would be the substructure of or attributes upon a <reference/> markup element with a corresponding JavaScript interface.  By means of CSS3, such a <reference/> element could render to at least any of the existing styles.

Furthermore, with such a <reference/> element, a <cite/> elements could connect to <reference/> elements.  A <cite/> element can include an attribute, @ref, with a text string value identical to the @id attribute value of its corresponding <reference/> element.  Some or all of the attributes on <reference/>, from the aforementioned metadata model, can be overridden upon <cite/> which allows for indications, such as page ranges, or even to paragraphs or sentences on pages, in referenced materials.  The rendering of the <cite/> elements could, additionally, be described by CSS3.

Furthermore, with a <cite/> element, as described, a <cite/> element could refer, additionally, to <footnote/> elements.  The typography, layout and formatting styles for citations, references and footnotes, which often occur in scientific, scholarly and encyclopedic documents, can be facilitated by the <cite/>, <reference/> and <footnote/> (or <note/>) elements, utilizing CSS3, as described.

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