Citation Management

Jenni handles citations from insertion through to final bibliography. Search for sources, pick a style, and the formatted references take care of themselves.

Adding Citations

There are several ways to insert citations while writing.

Quick Insert

Click Cite in the editor toolbar or type @ in the document. A search panel appears where you can look up sources by title, author, DOI, URL, or keyword. Select a result and the citation is inserted at your cursor position.

The @ Shortcut

Type @ while writing to open the citation search inline. Search and insert a source without leaving the flow of your sentence.

Highlight and Cite

Select any sentence or paragraph, then click Cite in the selection toolbar. The Citation Search Manager opens, where you can search for relevant sources, toggle between your Library and web results, filter by year or relevance, and click Cite to insert. Jenni adds the source to your reference list automatically.

Cite from Your Library

Click the Library tab in the right sidebar, find the source you want, place your cursor in your draft where the citation should appear, and click Cite on the library entry. The in-text citation and reference list entry are added in one step.

Find Papers Sidebar

Open Find papers from the editor sidebar for a dedicated research search space. You can search by topic, question, title, author, DOI, or a sentence from your draft without opening the inline citation menu.

• Start from a suggested query based on your document title, a recent search, or an example query
• Filter by publication year or citation count
• Sort by relevance, publication date, or citation count
• Click a result to cite it in the open document

After insertion, the result briefly changes to Cited. If no document is open, you can still search and inspect results, but Jenni asks you to open a document before inserting a citation.

Custom Citations

Open the Citation Search Manager and click Add Custom Citation. Paste a DOI, arXiv ID, or PubMed ID into the search bar. Jenni auto-fills the source metadata and lets you insert it.

Smart Citation Paste

Copy a DOI (e.g., 10.1016/j.biotechadv.2011.08.021) and paste it directly into the editor. Jenni prompts you to choose:

• Paste as Citation – inserts an in-text citation and adds the full reference to your bibliography
• Paste as Link – adds a clickable link to the source
• Paste as Plain Text – inserts the DOI as regular text

This menu appears only when the pasted content is a standalone DOI or PMID URL. A bibliography or other block of text that happens to contain an identifier pastes as regular content.

Search Filters

In citation search and Find papers, open Filter to narrow results by:

• Publication year sets the earliest publication year to include
• Citation count sets the minimum number of citations a result must have

Use the All, Discover, and Library tabs to choose whether results come from all available sources, external discovery, or your Library. These search filters remain available until you clear them or close the panel.

Document setup and AI Chat provide additional citation controls for publication year, impact factor, minimum citation count, and whether to include preprints.

Include or Exclude Preprints

Open the document’s citation settings and use Include preprints to control whether Jenni can suggest preprints and other non-peer-reviewed sources. The setting is enabled by default. Turn it off when you want citation suggestions limited to peer-reviewed work types; the choice applies to autocomplete and review suggestions for that document.

When creating a document on mobile, publication recency and Include preprints remain visible in the setup. Tap Advanced filters to reveal the impact-factor and minimum-citation-count controls. Desktop shows all four controls directly.

Set Citation Requirements in a Document Prompt

When you create a document, include citation requirements in the prompt alongside your topic. Jenni can apply a publication-year range, citation style, peer-reviewed-only preference, minimum citation count, or impact-factor threshold to the new document.

For example: Write a literature review using APA citations from peer-reviewed papers published since 2020.

Jenni preserves citation settings you selected manually. Open the document’s citation settings at any time to review or change what was applied.

Choose Sources for a Document

In document citation settings, enable Auto-cite from Library; in the new-document setup, enable Library search. Then open Configure context. You can add individual sources, one collection, or both. Your choices appear as pills; remove a pill to stop using it, or click a source pill to preview its PDF.

Jenni searches across the union of the sources and collection you selected. You can pin multiple individual sources but only one collection at a time. Leave the selector empty when Jenni should use your full Library.

Citation Styles

Default Styles

Five styles are available directly from the dropdown:

Additional Styles

The dropdown includes a search field that queries the Zotero CSL Style Repository. Over 10,000 styles are available, including Vancouver, BMJ, PLOS ONE, Nature, and journal-specific styles. Select any style from the search results to apply it. You do not need to download or manually upload style files.

Changing Styles

Click Citation Style in the toolbar to open the citation format dialog. From the same dialog you can search for a style, choose a locale, control locator mapping, and inspect live in-text and bibliography previews. All citations and the bibliography update automatically when you save a new format.

Citation Locale

Choose a citation locale from the Localized for list. Locales control terms and formatting such as page labels, dates, and localized citation text. Numeric styles like IEEE and Vancouver also respect the selected locale.

Use Map locator in citations to control whether page locators appear in formatted citations. The style, locale, and locator preference are saved with the document; new documents can inherit your document defaults. Editor citations, chat citations, the references panel, clipboard output, and DOCX export all use the selected locale and locator preference.

In-Text Citation Types

Jenni supports several in-text citation formats depending on context and style:

• Parenthetical (Smith, 2020)
• Narrative Smith (2020)
• Multiple sources (Smith, 2020; Jones, 2019)
• Grouped collapses multiple works by the same author into a single reference
• With page numbers (Smith, 2020, p. 45) or (Smith, 2020, pp. 45–50)

The available formats depend on the active citation style. Numeric styles like IEEE use bracketed numbers rather than author-date pairs.

Editing Citations

Click any in-text citation to open the citation editor. From there you can:

• Add or change page numbers
• Add a prefix (e.g., “see”) or suffix (e.g., “emphasis added”)
• Switch between parenthetical and narrative forms
• Remove the citation entirely

Changes apply immediately and the bibliography updates to reflect any edits.

Switching Between Narrative and Parenthetical

Jenni supports two common in-text citation formats:

• Narrative – Use when referring to a source by name: Smith (2020) argues that…
• Parenthetical – Use when quoting or paraphrasing: (Smith, 2020)

To switch: click the in-text citation in your document, then click In-text Citation Style in the citation editor and choose your preferred format.

Bibliography

Jenni generates a bibliography at the end of your document automatically. It includes every source you have cited in the text. The section heading adapts to match your citation style:

The bibliography:

• Updates in real time as you add or remove citations
• Follows all formatting rules of the active citation style (indentation, italics, ordering)
• Sorts entries according to the style specification (alphabetical for APA, numbered for IEEE, and so on)
• Removes references automatically when you delete the corresponding in-text citation

You do not need to create or manage the bibliography manually.

Exporting Your Reference List

From the reference list at the bottom of your document, you can:

• Copy to Clipboard – paste the formatted list into another document
• Copy as BibTeX – copy BibTeX-formatted entries to your clipboard
• Download as BibTeX – save a .bib file for use in LaTeX editors, Overleaf, or other reference managers

Reference Manager Integration

Zotero

Choose Import from Zotero from the Library upload menu or connect Zotero from Settings > Connections. Jenni redirects you to authorize access. Once connected, select a collection from your personal library or a readable Zotero group library. Sources appear in your Jenni Library and become available in citation search.

This is a one-way import. Changes made in Zotero after the initial import are not synced automatically. To pull in new sources, go to Settings > Connections and re-import.

Mendeley

The Mendeley flow works the same way. Click Import from Mendeley, authorize, select a collection, and import. Like Zotero, this is a one-way operation. Re-import from Settings > Connections to pick up new additions.

Advanced Features

DOI Resolution

Paste a DOI into the citation search field. Jenni resolves it to the full bibliographic record and inserts a properly formatted citation.

URL Import

Paste a URL to a paper or web page. Jenni extracts available metadata and creates a citation entry.

BibTeX Import and Export

Import citations from a .bib file to add them to your library in bulk. You can also export your bibliography as BibTeX for use in LaTeX editors or other reference managers.

PDF Upload with Auto-Metadata

Upload a PDF directly. Jenni extracts metadata (title, authors, year, DOI) and creates a library entry that you can cite from.

Contributor Roles

Source details include a Role dropdown for each contributor. Use it to identify authors, editors, translators, directors, producers, hosts, interviewers, narrators, and other supported roles. Jenni uses these roles when formatting in-text citations and bibliographies.

Contributor roles imported from Zotero, BibTeX, BibLaTeX, RIS, or DOI metadata are preserved when available. You can correct them from the source details panel.

Previewing Suggested Citations

Autocomplete can show suggested citations before you accept the surrounding text. Hover over a suggested citation to preview its source details. Click it to open the citation modal in read-only mode without changing the suggestion.

Resolving Source Quality Flags

When a Source Quality review flags a citation, click the citation to inspect the warning. You can keep it, remove it, replace a preprint with a known published version, or search for a replacement inside the issue popover.

Citation Matching on Import

When you import a Word document that contains references, Jenni attempts to reconnect in-text citations with the matching references. Suggested matches appear as pending items that you can confirm or correct individually, so you do not have to add every citation again.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Where Citations Come From

Jenni searches scholarly sources from journals, books, preprints, and conference proceedings. You can search by title, author, DOI, or PMID, then review the source details before inserting a citation.

When you upload a PDF, Jenni also uses the paper’s contents to support AI Autocomplete, AI Chat analysis, and reference suggestions.

How Jenni Avoids Fabricated Citations

Jenni attaches citations to identifiable sources and shows the source details so you can verify them. For the most accurate results, search by DOI or exact title, or upload the complete PDF rather than metadata alone. Always review a source before relying on it in your work.

Best Practices

• Search by DOI when you have it. This returns the most accurate result.
• Use filters to narrow large result sets instead of scrolling through hundreds of matches.
• Set your citation style early in the writing process to avoid formatting surprises.
• Re-import from Zotero or Mendeley periodically if you are actively adding sources there.
• In the Citation Manager, click the bookmark icon on any web result to save it to your Library for later use.

Troubleshooting

Frequently Asked Questions