| name | format-citation |
| description | Format one or more scholarly identifiers as citations in a chosen style (Vancouver, AMA, APA, IEEE, CSE, or any CSL style ID). |
formatCitation
Takes a free-text block of identifiers (one per line, mixed types OK) and returns formatted citations in the requested style. Five builtins ship as plain-text formatters; any other style routes through citeproc-js with a CSL stylesheet.
When to use
- The user pastes a list of DOIs/PMIDs/ISBNs and wants Vancouver/APA/IEEE/etc. references.
- An agent needs to render a bibliography for a draft manuscript.
Inputs
text (string, required) — One identifier per line, or free text containing identifiers.style (string, optional) — Builtin: vancouver (default), ama, apa, ieee, cse. Or any CSL style ID (e.g. nature, lancet, chicago-author-date).locale (string, optional) — CSL locale, e.g. en-US, en-GB.output (string, optional) — "text" (default) or "html".footnotes (boolean, optional) — Render HTML output as footnotes.
Outputs
{ ok: true, items: [{ ok, formatted, _source }, ...] }. Mixed success — per-item ok flag lets the agent surface partial failures.
Underlying surfaces
- REST:
POST /api/format (or /api/format/stream for NDJSON streaming).
- MCP tool:
formatCitation.
Example
curl -sS -X POST "https://scholar-sidekick.com/api/format" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"text":"10.1038/nphys1170\n34812345","style":"apa","output":"text"}'
See also
exportCitation for file-format bibliographies (RIS, BibTeX, etc.)./docs.md for full API reference.
