Wenxian

Wenxian - Citation Generator

When to use this skill

Use this skill when:

• Users need to generate citations or bibliography entries for academic papers
• Users have DOI, PMID, arXiv ID, or paper titles and need citations
• Users are working on LaTeX documents and need BibTeX entries
• Users need plain text or Markdown formatted citations
• Users mention citations, references, BibTeX, or academic papers

Overview

Wenxian is a tool that generates citations from various academic paper identifiers in multiple formats (BibTeX, plain text, Markdown). The name "wenxian" (文献) means "literature" or "references" in Chinese.

Installation and Prerequisites

Wenxian requires Python 3.10+. It's recommended to use uv package manager.

If uv is not already installed, install it with:

pip install uv

Or, if pip is not available:

curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

How to generate BibTeX entries

Using DOI (Digital Object Identifier)

uvx wenxian from 10.1063/5.0155600

Using arXiv ID

uvx wenxian from 1512.03385

Using PMID (PubMed ID)

uvx wenxian from 12345678

Using paper title

When the identifier is a text string, wenxian searches by paper title:

uvx wenxian from "Attention is all you need"

Note: Enclose paper titles in quotes if they contain spaces.

Output formats

By default, wenxian generates BibTeX format. You can specify different output formats using the -t or --type option:

BibTeX format (default)

uvx wenxian from 1512.03385

Plain text format

Generate a plain text citation instead of BibTeX:

uvx wenxian from 1512.03385 -t text

Example output: Kaiming He, Xiangyu Zhang, Shaoqing Ren, Jian Sun, Deep Residual Learning for Image Recognition, arXiv, 2015, 1512.03385.

Markdown format

uvx wenxian from 1512.03385 -t markdown

Expected output

By default, the command will print a BibTeX entry to standard output. For example:

@article{vaswani2017attention,
  title={Attention is all you need},
  author={Vaswani, Ashish and Shazeer, Noam and ...},
  journal={Advances in neural information processing systems},
  volume={30},
  year={2017}
}

Common use cases

1. Single citation: Generate a BibTeX entry for one paper

   uvx wenxian from "10.1038/nature12373"
   

2. Multiple citations: Generate entries for multiple papers by running the command multiple times

   uvx wenxian from "10.1038/nature12373"
   uvx wenxian from "10.1126/science.1158899"
   

3. Save to file: Redirect output to a .bib file

   uvx wenxian from "10.1038/nature12373" >> references.bib
   

Edge cases and troubleshooting

1. Invalid identifier: If the identifier is not recognized, wenxian will return an error. Verify the identifier format.

2. Network issues: Wenxian queries external APIs. Network connectivity is required.

3. Paper title not found: If searching by title doesn't return results, try:

   • Using a more complete or exact title
   • Using the DOI or arXiv ID instead
   • Checking for typos in the title

4. Multiple results for title search: Wenxian will return the best match. If unsure, use a specific identifier like DOI.

5. Special characters in titles: Always use quotes around paper titles, especially if they contain spaces or special characters.

Supported identifier types

• DOI: Digital Object Identifier (e.g., 10.1063/5.0155600)
• arXiv ID: arXiv preprint identifier (e.g., 1512.03385)
• PMID: PubMed identifier (e.g., 12345678)
• Paper title: Full or partial paper title as a string (e.g., "Attention is all you need")

Supported output formats

• BibTeX (default): For LaTeX documents and reference managers
• Plain text: Human-readable citation format
• Markdown: For Markdown documents and wikis

Integration examples

In a workflow

When a user asks to "add a citation for DOI 10.1234/example", you should:

1. Run wenxian to generate the BibTeX entry:

   uvx wenxian from 10.1234/example
   

2. Display or save the output to their bibliography file

3. Confirm the citation has been added

Batch processing

For multiple citations, run wenxian for each identifier and append results:

uvx wenxian from "10.1038/nature12373" >> references.bib
uvx wenxian from "1512.03385" >> references.bib
uvx wenxian from "Attention is all you need" >> references.bib

Best practices

1. Prefer specific identifiers: DOI and arXiv IDs are more reliable than title searches
2. Quote titles: Always enclose paper titles in quotes
3. Choose appropriate format: Use -t text for plain citations, -t markdown for Markdown documents, or default BibTeX for LaTeX
4. Verify output: Check the generated citation for completeness
5. Use uv: The uvx command ensures you're always using the latest version without manual installation
6. Handle errors gracefully: If wenxian fails, ask the user to verify the identifier or try an alternative identifier type