CiteULike was a web service which allowed users to save and share citations to

academic paper Academic publishing is the subfield of publishing which distributes academic research and scholarship. Most academic work is published in academic journal articles, books or theses. The part of academic written output that is not formally pub ...

s. Based on the principle of

social bookmarking Social bookmarking is an online service which allows users to add, annotate, edit, and share bookmarks of web documents. Many online bookmark management services have launched since 1996; Delicious, founded in 2003, popularized the terms "social ...

, the site worked to promote and to develop the sharing of scientific references amongst

researchers Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness t ...

. In the same way that it is possible to catalog web pages (with Furl and delicious) or photographs (with

Flickr Flickr ( ; ) is an American image hosting and video hosting service, as well as an online community, founded in Canada and headquartered in the United States. It was created by Ludicorp in 2004 and was a popular way for amateur and profession ...

), scientists could share citation information using CiteULike. Richard Cameron developed CiteULike in November 2004 and in 2006 Oversity Ltd. was established to develop and support CiteULike.CiteULike. "Frequently Asked Questions: Who is behind CiteULike?

. In February 2019, CiteULike announced that it would be ceasing operations as of March 30, 2019. When browsing issues of research journals, small scripts stored in bookmarks (

bookmarklet A bookmarklet is a bookmark stored in a web browser that contains JavaScript commands that add new features to the browser. They are stored as the URL of a bookmark in a web browser or as a hyperlink on a web page. Bookmarklets are usually smal ...

s) allowed one to import articles from repositories like

PubMed PubMed is a free search engine accessing primarily the MEDLINE database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics. The United States National Library of Medicine (NLM) at the National Institutes of Health maintain t ...

, and CiteULike supported many more. Then the system attempted to determine the article metadata (title, authors, journal name, etc.) automatically. Users could organize their libraries with freely chosen tags and this produces a

folksonomy Folksonomy is a classification system in which end users apply public tags to online items, typically to make those items easier for themselves or others to find later. Over time, this can give rise to a classification system based on those tags ...

of academic interests.

Basic principles

Initially, one added a reference to CiteULike directly from within a

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used o ...

, without needing a separate program. For common online databases like

, author names, title, and other details were imported automatically. One could manually add tags for grouping of references. The web site could be used to search public references by all users or only one's own references. References could later be exported via

BibTeX BibTeX is reference management software for formatting lists of references. The BibTeX tool is typically used together with the LaTeX document preparation system. Within the typesetting system, its name is styled as . The name is a portmanteau ...

EndNote A note is a string of text placed at the bottom of a page (paper), page in a book or document or at the end of a chapter, volume, or the whole text. The note can provide an author's comments on the main text or citations of a reference work in ...

to be used on local computers.

Creation of entries and definition of keywords

CiteULike provided bookmarklet

to quickly add references from the web pages of the most common sites. These small Scripting language, scripts read the citation information from the web page and imported into the CiteULike database for the currently logged in user. Sites supported for semi-automatic import included

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential econo ...

arXiv.org arXiv (pronounced "archive"—the X represents the Greek letter chi ⟨χ⟩) is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints (known as e-prints) approved for posting after moderation, but not peer review. It consists of s ...

, JSTOR,

PLoS PLOS (for Public Library of Science; PLoS until 2012 ) is a nonprofit publisher of open-access journals in science, technology, and medicine and other scientific literature, under an open-content license. It was founded in 2000 and laun ...

, SpringerLink, and ScienceDirect. It was also possible although more time-consuming to add entries manually. Entries could be

tagged Tagged may refer to: * Tagged (website), a social discovery website * Tagged (web series), an American teen psychological thriller web series {{disambiguation ...

for easier retrieval and organisation. More frequent tags were displayed in a proportionally larger font. Tags could be clicked to call up articles containing this tag.

Sharing and exporting entries

New entries were added as ''public'' by default, which made them accessible to everyone. Entries could be added as ''private'' and were then only available to the specific user. Users of CiteULike thus automatically shared all their public entries with other users. The tags assigned to public entries contributed to the site-wide tag network. All public references could also be searched and filtered by tag. In addition, the site provided ''groups'' that users could join themselves or by invitation. Groups were typically labs, institutions, professions, or research areas. On line CiteULike entries could be downloaded to a local computer by means of export functions. One export format was

, the referencing system used in

TeX Tex may refer to: People and fictional characters * Tex (nickname), a list of people and fictional characters with the nickname * Joe Tex (1933–1982), stage name of American soul singer Joseph Arrington Jr. Entertainment * ''Tex'', the Italian ...

and

LaTeX Latex is an emulsion (stable dispersion) of polymer microparticles in water. Latexes are found in nature, but synthetic latexes are common as well. In nature, latex is found as a milky fluid found in 10% of all flowering plants (angiosperms ...

. The BibTeX output could also be imported directly into Overleaf."Import your bibs! Reference management tools now linked to Overleaf

The RIS (file format), RIS file format was also available for commercial bibliography programs such as

or Reference Manager. It also allowed import into the free

Zotero Zotero () is a free and open-source reference management software to manage bibliographic data and related research materials, such as PDF files. Features include web browser integration, online syncing, generation of in-text citations, footno ...

bibliography extension of

Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current ...

. Export was possible for individual entries or the entire library. CiteULike gave access to personal or shared bibliographies directly from the web. It allowed one to see what other people had posted publicly, which tags they had added, and how they had commented and rated a paper. It was also possible to browse the public libraries of people with similar interests to discover interesting papers. Groups allowed individual users to collaborate with other users to build a library of references. The data were backed up daily from the central server.

Software

CiteULike was written in

Tcl TCL or Tcl or TCLs may refer to: Business * TCL Technology, a Chinese consumer electronics and appliance company **TCL Electronics, a subsidiary of TCL Technology * Texas Collegiate League, a collegiate baseball league * Trade Centre Limited ...

, with user contributed plugins in

Python Python may refer to: Snakes * Pythonidae, a family of nonvenomous snakes found in Africa, Asia, and Australia ** ''Python'' (genus), a genus of Pythonidae found in Africa and Asia * Python (mythology), a mythical serpent Computing * Python (pro ...

Perl Perl is a family of two high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming languages. "Perl" refers to Perl 5, but from 2000 to 2019 it also referred to its redesigned "sister language", Perl 6, before the latter's name was offic ...

Ruby A ruby is a pinkish red to blood-red colored gemstone, a variety of the mineral corundum ( aluminium oxide). Ruby is one of the most popular traditional jewelry gems and is very durable. Other varieties of gem-quality corundum are called ...

and

; some additional modules were written in

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...

; data were stored using PostgreSQLHammond, T., et al. "Social Bookmarking Tools (I) A General Review."
D-Lib
There was no

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

but plugins could be contributed using Subversion. The software behind the service was

closed source Proprietary software is software that is deemed within the free and open-source software to be non-free because its creator, publisher, or other rightsholder or rightsholder partner exercises a legal monopoly afforded by modern copyright and inte ...

, but the dataset collected by the users was in the

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...

About the site

The site stemmed from personal scientific requirements. The initial author found existing bibliography software cumbersome. CiteULike was created in November 2004 and further developed in December 2006, running until March 2019. The site was based in the UK. The service was free and was run independently of any particular publisher with a liberal privacy policy.

References

External links

* {{Official website Library 2.0 Social bookmarking websites Reference management software Social information processing Internet properties established in 2004 Social cataloging applications Internet properties disestablished in 2019