Release notes

August 19, 2026 · View on GitHub

The format is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

Unreleased

Version 1.5.0 - 2026-08-19

Added

  • The recommended CSS for formatting the bibliography is now shipped with the package (in assets/citations.css) and inserted automatically by a new DocumenterCitations.InjectAssets pipeline step. Manually adding assets=String["assets/citations.css"] to the Documenter.HTML format in docs/make.jl is no longer required. Custom CSS can still be added that way, and takes precedence over the bundled stylesheet. [#115, #116]
  • An insert_css keyword argument for CitationBibliography. The default is insert_css=true. With insert_css=false, the bundled citations.css is not inserted, which gives full control over the CSS for citations and bibliographies to the assets of Documenter.HTML. [#116]
  • A warning if any of the assets of Documenter.HTML is an unmodified copy of a citations.css bundled with some version of DocumenterCitations. Such a copy is redundant, as the stylesheet is now inserted automatically, and it would mask any future update of the bundled stylesheet. Customized stylesheets do not trigger the warning. [#116]
  • Hovering over a citation link in the HTML documentation now shows the corresponding bibliography entry in a popup, similar to the footnote previews in Documenter. This is enabled by default; instantiate the plugin with show_hover=false to disable it. [#67, #119]
  • Each entry in a canonical @bibliography block in the HTML documentation now ends with backlinks (↩) to the places where the reference is cited. After following a citation, the backlink that leads back to it is marked. This is enabled by default; instantiate the plugin with show_backlinks=false to disable it. [#69, #120]
  • An unofficial and unsupported hook that allows seeding the plugin from multiple .bib files. See test/test_multiple_bibfiles.jl for a worked example. [#72, #121]
  • Support for a relative bibfile path, resolved relative to the script currently being executed (assumed to be make.jl) [#122]

Changed

  • Widened the [compat] bound for Bibliography to include the v0.4 release. The v0.4 API is fully compatible with the functions used by this package. [#114]
  • Widened the [compat] bound for OrderedCollections to include the v2 release. [#117, in lieu of #111]
  • Updated links to Bibliography.jl, BibParser.jl, and BibInternal.jl, which have moved from the Humans-of-Julia GitHub organization to JuliaBibliographies. [#114]

Upgrade guidelines:

If you followed the instructions in previous versions of DocumenterCitations to create a citations.css file (based on the content given in the documentation), and passed it as a member of the list of assets to Documenter.HTML, you should now either delete that file from your docs/src/assets/ folder and from the assets list, or change the instantiation of CitationBibliography to have insert_css=false. Otherwise, the existing citations.css will be applied on top of the new built-in citations.css. Most likely, this is harmless (the two files are identical), but it may lead to conflicts and unexpected behavior if the built-in CSS ever changes in future versions. If you are deliberately using a custom CSS, you should investigate how your CSS interacts with the built-in definitions, and whether they should be applied on top (insert_css=true) or whether you want to take over the CSS styling completely (insert_css=false).

Version 1.4.1 - 2025-08-26

Fixed

  • The LaTeX special symbol \S in a .bib file is now correctly translated to the section sign §. [#102]

Version 1.4.0 - 2025-06-14

Added

  • The CitationBibliography plugin object now has an internal field anchor_keys that is a bijective mapping of citation keys to HTML anchor names. The anchor names are normalized versions of the citation keys that are restricted to ASCII alphanumerics, dashes (-) and underscores (_). This provides compatibility with HTML4 and additionally avoids issues with CSS selectors. It also works around restrictions of the Documenter.DOM framework that is used internally to render HTML content. [#95]

Fixed

  • Citation keys the contain special characters (like colons) no longer produce broken links. This is achieved by normalizing HTML anchor names to contain only alphanumeric ASCII characters, dashes, and underscores [#86, #95]

Version 1.3.7 - 2025-03-29

Fixed

  • Show error file paths consistently with Documenter. With Documenter < 1.10, paths in error messages are relative to the docs folder. With Documenter >= 1.10, they are relative to the current working directory [#89]

Version 1.3.6 - 2025-03-01

Fixed

  • The format_authoryear_bibliography_reference function with article_link_doi_in_title = true would link the DOI both from the journal reference and from the title. Now, the DOI is linked from the journal when article_link_doi_in_title = false and from the title when article_link_doi_in_title = true. [#87]

Version 1.3.5 - 2024-11-14

Fixed

  • Compatibility with BibInternals v0.3.7 [#80, #83]
  • Allow LaTeX escape codes to appear at the beginning of a first name. That is, names are now un-escaped before generating name initials. [#78, #83]

Internal Changes

  • The internal format_labeled_bibliography_reference function now forwards keyword arguments to the internal format_names functions. This makes it easier to customize styles, e.g., to limit the number of author before "et al." is used. [#79]

Version 1.3.4 - 2024-09-19

Internal Changes

  • Added an article_link_doi_in_title option to the internal format_published_in and format_labeled_bibliography_reference functions. This allows custom styles to change how links appear in bibliography entries for articles. By setting the option to true, the title of the article,instead of the "published in" information, will be used as the link text for a DOI . This makes the bibliography for articles more consistent with other types or entries, but is recommended only if no entries have both a DOI and a URL. [#73, #74]

Version 1.3.3 - 2024-03-08

Fixed

  • The recommended CSS (citations.css) now includes a fix to be compatible with the dark-mode CSS of Documenter. Existing pages should update their citations.css to add !important to the list-style of .citation ul. [#70]

Version 1.3.2 - 2023-11-29

Fixed

  • Warn about markdown link syntax in .bib files [#60]
  • Warn about invalid DOIs in .bib files. The DOI field should never contain a URL (https://doi.org/...). However, such usage is detected as a special case, and the DOI is automatically extracted from the URL.
  • Automatically link both URL and DOI fields. This fixes a regression in v1.3.0, which would throw an error for @book and @proceeding entries with both a URL and a DOI field. Now, the URL in such a case will be automatically linked via the Title field, and the DOI via the organization/publisher/address fields, similar to the behavior in v1.2.0. You may prefer to have the DOI linked via that Title, in which case you should add a Note field containing the URL (using \url/\href, as appropriate). [#65]
  • Calling makedocs with linkcheck=true now also checks links (e.g., DOIs) inside the bibliography. Note that the correct behavior requires Documenter 1.2. With older versions of Documenter, broken links in the bibliography will be silently ignored. [#58, #62, Documenter#2329, Documenter#2330]

Version 1.3.1 - 2023-11-02

Fixed

  • Added a fallback for the Pages attribute in a @bibliography block to behave as in pre-1.3.0: If Pages references a file with a path relative to the docs/src directory (which was the unintentional requirement pre-1.3.0), this now works again, but shows a warning that the name should be updated to be relative to the folder containing the file that contains the @bibliography block. [#61]

    This fixes the v1.3.0 release arguably having been "breaking" [#59] in that anybody who was using Pages pre-1.3.0 would have had to use paths relative to docs/src, even though that was a workaround for a known bug [#22]. Note that whenever Pages references the current file, @__FILE__ should be used.

Version 1.3.0 - 2023-11-01

Fixed

  • Skip the expansion of citations and bibliographies when running in doctest mode [#34]
  • Support underscores in citation keys [#14]
  • The Pages in a @bibliography block are now relative to the folder containing the current file. The behavior is consistent with Pages in Documenter's @index and @contents blocks. [#22]
  • The parsing of LaTeX strings has improved significantly. In particular, curly braces should now be stripped correctly [#15]. Note that that braces in titles are never needed for DocumenterCitations, but handling them correctly makes it easier to use the same .bib file for LaTeX and DocumenterCitations.
  • Fixed the rendering of references other than @article, especially @inproceedings, @incollection, @inbooks, mimicking RevTeX. The DOI/URL are now linked via the Title and/or Booktitle. Added support for Chapter, Volume, Number, Edition, Month fields. [#56]

Added

  • Allow multiple citations in a single @cite link. In the default numeric style, these can be compressed, e.g. "Refs. [1–3]" [#6]
  • In general (depending on the style and citation syntax), citation links may now render to arbitrarily complex expressions.
  • Citation comments can now have inline markdown elements, e.g., [GoerzQ2022; definition of $J$ in section *Running costs*](@cite)
  • When running in non-strict mode, missing bibliographic references (either because the .bib file does not contain an entry with a specific BibTeX key, or because of a missing @biblography block) are now handled similarly to missing references in LaTeX: They will show as (unlinked) question marks.
  • Support for bibliographies in PDFs generate via LaTeX (format=Documenter.LaTeX()). Citations and references are rendered exactly as in the HTML version. Specifically, the support does not depend on bibtex/biblatex and supports any style (including custom styles). [#18]
  • Functions DocumenterCitations.set_latex_options and DocumenterCitations.reset_latex_options to tweak the rendering of bibliographies in PDFs.
  • The Pages in a @bibliography block can now use @__FILE__ to refer to the current file. [#22]
  • You may now use \url and \href commands in the @misc field of an entry.
  • The Urldate field is now supported for citing websites. [#53]

Internal Changes

  • Removed the redundant CitationLink.link_text field.
  • Added read_citation_link replacing the former CitationLink constructor.
  • CitationLink can now be instantiated directly from markdown strings (for documentation / testing purposes)
  • Added DirectCitationLink type to represent citations of the form [text](@cite key).
  • Exposed CitationLink to users who want to implement a custom style (see changes in format_citation)
  • The interface for the format_citation function has changed: Before, the signature was format_citation(style, entry, citations; note, cite_cmd, capitalize, starred) and the function would return as string that would replace the link text of the citation link. Now, the signature is format_citation(style, cit, entries, citations) where cit is a CitationLink object, and the function returns a string of markdown code that replaces the entire citation link (not just the link text). Generally, the returned markdown code is expected to contain direct citation links which, are automatically expanded subsequently. That is, format_citation now generally converts indirect citation links (CitationLink) into direct citation links (DirectCitationLink).
  • Exposed the internal function format_labeled_citation that implements format_citation for the built-in styles :numeric and :alpha and may be useful for custom styles that are variations of these.
  • Exposed the internal function format_authoryear_citation that implements format_citation for the built-in style :authoryear
  • Exposed the internal function format_labeled_bibliography_reference that implements format_bibliography_reference for the built-in styles :numeric and :alpha.
  • Exposed the internal function format_authoryear_bibliography_reference that implements format_bibliography_reference for the built-in style :authoryear:.
  • The example custom styles :enumauthoryear and :keylabels have been rewritten using the above internal functions, illustrating that custom styles will usually not have to rely on the undocumented and even more internal functions like format_names and tex2unicode.
  • Any @bibliography block is now internally expanded into an internal BibliographyNode instead of a raw HTML node. This BibliographyNode can then be translated into the desired output format by Documenter.HTMLWriter or Documenter.LaTeXWriter. This is how support for bibliographies with format=Documenter.LaTeX() can be achieved.
  • The routine format_bibliography_reference must now return a markdown string instead of an HTML string.

Upgrade guidelines:

For anyone who was using custom styles, which rely on the Internals of DocumenterCitations, this release will almost certainly break the customization. See the above list of internal changes.

There were several bugs and limitations in version 1.2.x for which some existing documentations may have been using workarounds. These workarounds may cause some breakage in the new version 1.3.0. In particular:

  • The Pages attribute in a @bibliography block in version 1.2.x required any names to be relative to the docs/src directory [#22]. This was both unintentional and undocumented. These names must now be updated to be relative to to the folder containing the file which contains the @bibliography block. This is consistent with how Pages is used, e.g., in @contents or @index blocks. For the common usage where Pages was referring to the current file, @__FILE__ should be used.

  • Pre-1.3.0, strings in entries in the .bib file were extremely limited. There was no official support for any kind of tex macros: only plain-text (unicode) was fully supported. As a workaround, some users exploited an (undocumented/buggy) implementation detail that would cause html or markdown strings inside the .bib file to "work", e.g. for adding links in a note field. These workarounds may break in v1.3.0. While unicode is still very much supported (ö over \"{o}), .bib files should otherwise be written to be fully compatible with bibtex. For links in particular, the LaTeX \href macro should be used. Any tex commands that are not supported (Error: Unsupported command) should be reported. Some tex characters ($%@{}&) that may have worked directly pre-1.3.0 will have to be escaped in version 1.3.0.

Version 1.2.1 - 2023-09-22

Fixed

  • Collect citations that only occur in docstrings [#39, #40]
  • It is now possible to have a page that contains a @bibliography block listed in @contents [#16, #42].

Version 1.2.0 - 2023-09-16

Version changes

  • Update to Documenter 1.0. The most notable user-facing breaking change in Documenter 1.0 affecting DocumenterCitations is that the CitationBibliography plugin object now has to be passed to makedocs as an element of the plugins keyword argument, instead of as a positional argument.

Fixed

  • The plugin no longer conflicts with the linkcheck option of makedocs [#19]

Version 1.1.0 - 2023-09-15

Fixed

  • Avoid duplicate labels in :alpha style. This is implemented via the new stateful AlphaStyle(), but is handled automatically with (style=:alpha) [#31]
  • With the alphabetic style (:alpha/AlphaStyle), include up to 4 names in the label, not 3 (but 5 or more names results in 3 names and "+"). Also, include the first letter of a "particle" in the label, e.g. "vWB08" for a first author "von Winckel". Both of these are consistent with LaTeX's behavior.
  • Handle missing author/year, especially for :authoryar and :alpha styles. You end up with :alpha labels like Anon04 (missing authors) or CW?? (missing year), and :authoryear citations like "(Anonymous, 2004)" and "(Corcovilos and Weiss, undated)".
  • Consistent punctuation in the rendered bibliography, including for cases of missing fields.

Added

  • New style=AlphaStyle() that generates unique citation labels. This can mostly be considered internal, as style=:alpha is automatically upgraded to style=AlphaStyle().
  • Support for eprint field. It is recommended to add the arXiv ID in the eprint field for any article whose DOI is behind a paywall [#32]
  • Support for non-arXiv preprint servers BiorXiv and HAL [#35, #36]
  • Support for note field. [#20]

Changed

  • In the rendered bibliography, the BibTeX "URL" field is now linked via the title, while the "DOI" is linked via the journal information. This allows to have a DOI and URL at the same time, or a URL for an @unpublished/@misc citation. If there is a URL but no title, the URL is used as the title.

Internal Changes

  • Added an internal function init_bibliography! that is called at the beginning of the ExpandBibliography pipeline step. This function is intended to initialize internal state either of the style object or the CitationBibliography plugin object before rendering any @bibliography blocks. This is used to generate unique citation labels for the new AlphaStyle(). For the other builtin styles, it is a no-op. Generally, init_bibliography! can help with implementing custom "stateful" styles.

Version 1.0.0 - 2023-07-12

Version changes

  • The minimum supported Julia version has been raised from 1.4 to 1.6.

Breaking

  • The default citation style has changed to :numeric. To restore the author-year style used pre-1.0, instantiate CitationBibliography with the option style=:authoryear in docs/make.jl before passing it to makedocs.
  • Only cited references are included in the main bibliography by default, as opposed to all references defined in the underlying .bib file.

Added

  • A style keyword argument for CitationBibliography. The default style is style=:numeric. Other built-in styles are style=:authoryear (corresponding to the pre-1.0 style) and style=:alpha.
  • It is now possible to implement custom citation styles.
  • The @bibligraphy block can now have additional options to customize which references are included, see Syntax for the Bibliography Block.
  • It is possible to generate secondary bibliographies, e.g., for a specific page.
  • There is new syntax to create links to bibliographic references with arbitrary text.
  • The following variations of the @cite command are now supported: @citet, @citep, @cite*, @citet*, @citep*, @Citet, @Citep, @Cite*, @Citet*, @Citep*. See the syntax for citations for details.
  • Citations can now include notes, e.g., See Ref. [GoerzQ2022; Eq. (1)](@cite).

Other