Citing and Referencing

In MyST Markdown you can make citations in two ways, using DOIs or the bibliography. If you want to cite an article with a DOI, you can use a DOI link. We maintain a centralised BibTeX bibliography file containing references. The bibliography file is located in the book repository, ./book/website/_bibliography/references.bib.

DOI citations¶

You can reference a document by its DOI simply by linking to the DOI url. For example, [_The Turing Way_](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15213042) renders as The Turing Way. Note that this only works for the doi.org url and not, for example, a zenodo.org url.

You can also let MyST create a citation string using the DOI string and the prefix doi:. For example, [](doi:10.5281/zenodo.15213042) renders as The Turing Way Community (2025).

You can read more about DOI links in the MyST Markdown documentation.

Bibliography¶

BibTeX file basics¶

BibTeX files are a way to format lists of references in a structured way. Basic elements of an entry include a reference type, a unique citation key, and a series of key-value pairs that describe the reference (for example, author or title).

There are a number of keywords for different references types in BibTeX. Luckily, there are tools to help format references into BibTeX syntax. If you know the DOI for your reference, you can use doi2bib to help populate a good enough BibTeX entry. For example, here is a good enough BibTeX entry for The Turing Way handbook itself. Another good tool is Google Scholar, where you search for a reference, click on the large double quotes " or activate the pop-up menu labeled “Cite,” and then click on “BibTeX” near the bottom.

Examples of listing a BibTeX-formatted reference are shown below.

Adding a new reference in references.bib¶

You can edit reference file locally using a method from the following:

• Edit references.bib directly using a text editor
• Edit references.bib directly using a managing program such as JabRef (Linux, Windows, macOS) or BibDesk (macOS)

We use a standard BibTeX format to add a new entry. For example, there is an entry in the references.bib file as:

@article{baker2016reproducibility,
    author={Baker, Monya},
  	title={Reproducibility crisis?},
  	journal={Nature},
  	volume={533},
  	number={26},
  	pages={353--66},
  	year={2016}
}

Citation key style-guide¶

We recommend using the following structure for citation keys:

AuthorYYYYword

Where:

1. Author is the surname of the first author (Baker above)
2. YYYY is the year (2016 above)
3. word is the first meaningful word in the title (reproducibility above). Note, this is subjective―choose a name that makes it easy to remember the reference when you see the citation key.

Adding a new reference in the text¶

To cite an item in the bibliography, use the citation key (from references.bib) with an @ prefix. For example, @baker2016reproducibility renders as Baker (2016).

You can cite multiple items at once by separating them with semi-colons and enclosing them in square brackets. For example, [@baker2016reproducibility; @Markowetz2015] renders as Baker, 2016Markowetz, 2015.

You can read more about the markdown citation syntax in the MyST Markdown documentation.

Sphinx-style Citation Roles¶

MyST also support the older style of citation role used in Jupyter Book v1. These are not preferred for new citations, but you may see existing citation in this style in the book.