Scholar Citation Meta

Google Scholar and Zotero citation tags for a page about a single paper, chapter or book, generated from a DOI (Crossref, DataCite, doi.org) or BibTeX, with Scholar-friendly PDF links.

What it does

Scholar Citation Meta is for a page about a single work. Give a post a DOI, and the plugin adds the citation tags Google Scholar and Zotero need to recognize the page as that paper, chapter or book. It also gives the PDF a link Google Scholar will accept.

For pages that list many works, such as a publications page, use the companion plugin Scholar Citation Meta Scanner. It works on its own or together with this one.

Examples

• One paper (Meta): The urban-tech feedback loop, a journal article in Digital Geography & Society. Google Scholar has what it needs to index the page as that article, and Zotero saves it as a journal article.
• One book chapter (Meta): Land for AI, a chapter in The Inner World of Artificial Intelligence (CRC Press). Zotero saves it as a book section with the book title and publisher.
• A list of works (Scanner): Papers + Writings, a full publications list. Zotero offers every listed work with a DOI as a pick-list.
• Both together: Doing Critical GIS, a special-issue introduction with the issue's other articles listed below it. Meta describes the introduction itself for Google Scholar. The Scanner gives Zotero a pick-list with the introduction first, followed by the other articles.

Using both

The two plugins are built to run side by side. On a page with both:

• Google Scholar still reads Meta's tags, so the page is still described as its own work.
• Zotero prefers the Scanner's list, and the page's own work is put first in it (you can turn this off per page).
• If a DOI on a list page belongs to one of your own Meta posts, the Scanner uses that post's details, including any BibTeX fixes such as missing page numbers.

Features

For each paper post, enter a DOI (and optionally a PDF URL or BibTeX). The plugin then:

• Fetches title, authors, date, journal, volume, issue, pages, ISSN, publisher and DOI when you save the post. It tries Crossref first, then DataCite's API, then doi.org for any other registration agency. The box shows which one supplied the data and flags missing fields.
• Outputs Highwire citation_* meta tags in the page <head>. Google Scholar and the Zotero Connector both read these.
• Gives each PDF an alias under the post's URL and uses the alias in citation_pdf_url, because Google Scholar wants the PDF in the same folder as the abstract page:
  • /articles/file.pdf → /papers/<slug>/file.pdf
  • /wp-content/uploads/YYYY/MM/file.pdf → /papers/<slug>/YYYY/MM/file.pdf The alias rules are added to WordPress's own .htaccess block. PDFs in subfolders of /articles/ are used as-is, without an alias.
• Serves BibTeX and RIS downloads at ?scm_cite=bibtex / ?scm_cite=ris. Put [scholar_cite] in a post to show the links to readers.

Install

1. Download scholar-citation-meta-<version>.zip from the latest release. Download the release asset, not GitHub's "Source code" archive.
2. In WordPress, go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin, choose the zip, and activate. If an older copy is installed, choose Replace current with uploaded.
3. Go to Settings → Permalinks and click Save. This writes the PDF alias rules to .htaccess.
4. Edit a paper post. In the Scholar citation metadata box, enter the DOI and the PDF's URL, then click Update.
5. Reload the editor. The box shows the PDF link to use on the page (with a Copy button) and the exact tags that will be output.

Items without a DOI

Paste a BibTeX entry instead. Any field in the BibTeX overrides the Crossref value, which is useful for fixing a bad Crossref record. Supported entry types: article, incollection/inbook, inproceedings, book, techreport, thesis.

Settings (optional, in wp-config.php)

define( 'SCM_POST_TYPES', 'post' );   // comma-separated post types
define( 'SCM_PDF_PREFIX', 'papers' ); // first URL segment of paper posts
define( 'SCM_PDF_ALIAS', true );      // false = no alias rules
define( 'SCM_PDF_DIR', 'articles' );  // non-Media-Library PDF folder ('' = none)

Shortcodes

If the alias URL doesn't load

The plugin box shows whether the alias rule is in .htaccess.

• Rule found: Apache serves the PDF directly.
• Rule missing: WordPress serves the PDF itself (v1.3+), so the alias still works. To use the faster Apache rule, go to Settings → Permalinks and click Save. If WordPress says .htaccess isn't writable, copy the rules it shows into the file.
• Still a 404: check that the file name matches exactly. Linux servers are case-sensitive, so .PDF is not the same as .pdf.

DOIs Crossref can't find (DataCite, e.g. ACME)

Some journals register their DOIs with DataCite, not Crossref. When Crossref has no record, the plugin asks DataCite's API directly, but DataCite records are often thin. ACME's DOIs, for example, have no page numbers and put "Vol. 21 No. 4 (2022): ..." in the page field. The plugin pulls the volume and issue out of that text. To fill in anything still missing, add a short BibTeX entry with just those fields, e.g.:

@article{x, pages = {327--336}, issn = {1492-9732}}

Use the same entry type as the item (@article for journal articles). Any fields you leave out still come from the DOI lookup.

To check which agency registered a DOI, open https://doi.org/ra/<DOI>.

Updates

Version 1.7.0 and later update from this repository's Releases. When a new release is published, WordPress shows it on the Plugins and Updates screens, and you update with one click (or let auto-updates handle it). WordPress checks GitHub at most every 6 hours.

Versions before 1.7.0 don't have the updater, so upload 1.7.0 once by hand.

Releasing a new version (maintainers)

1. Bump the version in the plugin header (Version:) and in readme.txt (Stable tag:), and add a changelog entry to readme.txt.
2. Commit and push, then create a release whose tag is v<version>, e.g. gh release create v1.2.3 --generate-notes.
3. The Release workflow checks that the tag matches both version numbers, builds scholar-citation-meta-<version>.zip, and attaches it to the release. Sites running the plugin will then see the update.

Changelog

• 1.7.1: Update checks fall back to github.com when GitHub's API is rate-limited (common on shared hosting).
• 1.7.0: Updates from GitHub Releases: new versions appear on the Plugins screen like any other plugin.
• 1.6.0: The DOI field accepts publisher URLs (e.g. Taylor & Francis chapter links), drops title slugs after the DOI, and stores the DOI that actually resolved.
• 1.5.0: Checks the DataCite API directly when Crossref has no record, before falling back to doi.org.
• 1.4.0: doi.org fallback; cleanup of page fields that are not page numbers; missing-field hints.
• 1.3.0: PHP fallback for PDF aliases; .htaccess status line; shortcode reference table.
• 1.2.0: Alias link with copy button; [scholar_pdf] shortcode.
• 1.1.0: Aliases for PDFs stored in /articles/.
• 1.0.0: First release.

License

GPL-2.0-or-later. See LICENSE.