Embedded Self Citations
Also available in presentation mode…
Embedded Self Citations
- This idea is called Embedded Self Citations and is based on another idea called Reliable Electronic Citations and HTML.
Step One to be Cited: Self Cite
- When publishing texts, especially legal documents, in order to assist in allowing others to cite the documents, it would help to self cite. First it is necessary to make sure that the document can be cited down to the specific portions that might be cited. This can be done using the Reliable Electronic Citations. Then using standard web tags in HTML, there can be links to itself.
Filling a Need
- Need for authoritative documents that are copied or cited to help automate the citation back to the authoritative version.
- Need for simple way to allow users of authoritative documents to always properly cite their sources.
- Need for a method that does not need special server side programming.
- Need for a method that is web accessible and gracefully degrades without CSS and/or JavaScript.
How to Implement Embedded Self Citations: 1
- First implement Reliable Electronic Citations
- Determine the permanent, absolute URL for the authoritative document.
- Create obvious naming convention for sections, subsections and important spans.
- Use the "id" attribute for the relevant tags (e.g. <div id="section.1"> or <span id="approp.iii">).
How to Implement Embedded Self Citations: 2
- Within the "id"ed area, add at the beginning or the end the following:
- Add the <cite> tag which is a valid semantic HTML tag (but underused and not well understood).
- Within the <cite> tag, add an <a href="[absolute URL with fragment/#id]">.
How to Implement Embedded Self Citations: 3 and 4
- First use CSS to style the <cite> and <a> tags. Note that Embedded Self Citations links are easily separate from other links.
- Use Javascript for features like toggle on/off, grab/share the cite/permalink or other cool apps.
Bibliography and Further Info
