References and metadata

What is a reference?

A reference is any source of information that you cite in a research paper to support your ideas or provide evidence. There are different types of references, such as articles, books, websites, and more unconventional types like tweets, podcasts, or videos.

Essentially, anything used to inform your work or provide a basis for claims can be referenced. Paperpile can be considered a database where you can store and manage these references, making it easier to organize and cite them properly.

What is the metadata of a reference?

Each reference has metadata fields with all the information required to correctly cite and find them, such as Title, Authors, Journal, Date published, and more.

Different reference types have different sets of metadata. For example, an article has a journal field, while a book can have an edition field.

Paperpile saves all the metadata for your references in your library. The web app displays all this information in a compact form. To see all the metadata fields for a reference, click the three-dot button in the reference list.

You typically don’t need to think about metadata since Paperpile automatically sets all the data as metadata fields with values. To change the reference details or add data manually:

1. Select the reference
2. Select Edit in the toolbar

See Edit metadata for more details about metadata editing.

Paperpile uses your reference metadata to format your citations. For more information, see Citations and citation styles

Reference types

Paperpile includes a set of pre-defined reference types to make it easy to catalog and cite the most commonly-used types of reference material correctly.

To see all reference types:

• In the Add menu, select Create new to open the metadata edit dialog.
• Click within the Type field value at the top (it should read “Journal article” to start)

The dropdown shows a searchable list of all of Paperpile’s supported reference types. The most commonly-used types are at the top, under the heading Main reference types.

For reference, the table below describes all of the predefined reference types supported by Paperpile. If the item you are cataloguing doesn’t fit any of the predefined types, use the Miscellaneous type.