Ability to Cite in Knowledge Items

[xizhang]

I am currently evaluating citavi and I feel it is very promising -- I especially love the Knowledge Organiser. But I wonder if it is possible for you to add the ability to cite references when composing knowledge items? This can come very handy when conducting literature reviews and comparison studies.

Thanks.

[Jennifer Schultz]

Hi Xizhang,

Thanks for your kind words and for your question! Do you mean that you would like to be able to add secondary quotations such as "The power of facts has led to more laws than the legislature wants to accept" (Schmidt 1994, p. 84 as quoted by Müller 2003, p. 14). Or did you want to use multiple references for a single knowledge item such as "Several studies have debunked this theory." (Levine 2005, Lloyd 2010, Lombard 2010)".

You are right that at the moment there is unfortunately no way to link to another reference in a knowledge item. Using the first example above, as a workaround you would add the quotation to the reference by Müller and also add the work by Schmidt as a separate reference. To keep track of the connection between the two references, you can use the Links feature on the Context tab. In the Word Add-In you would add the information about the original author under Insert advanced in the Prefix field when inserting the knowledge item:


In order for the reference by Schmidt to appear in the bibliography, you would need to select it and then click Insert advanced > Bibliography entry > Add to bibliography only.

If you want to cite multiple references for one knowledge item, the best way is to copy the knowledge item to all of the other references using Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V. Then, insert one of the knowledge items. After that, click the field containing the first author's name. Then, select the next knowledge item and click Insert advanced > Citation only:


The possibility to join multiple authors to a single knowledge item is already in our wishlist for new features, but I unfortunately can't say when this might be developed.

Thanks again for the question, and please just let us know if you need any additional assistance!

Best regards,
Jennifer

[xizhang]

Hi Jennifer,

Thank you very much for your explanation -- I find it very informative, especially the "Links" feature in the "Context" tab. I think capturing links structurally is actually better than directly citing other references in the Knowledge Item editor and for my requirement I think this feature should suffice.

But still, I would be really happy to see the ability to cite other references when composing a knowledge item.

Thank you again for your help.