CiteMe - Academic Citations for Obsidian

Search and format academic citations from CiteMe directly in Obsidian, with quota-aware feedback and clear free/Pro style handling.

Features

• Instant search - Search millions of academic papers without leaving Obsidian
• Tier-aware citation styles - Free styles are available immediately and Pro styles are clearly marked
• Smart insertion - Insert in-text citations, full bibliography entries, or both
• References management - Automatically builds and maintains a References section in your notes
• Duplicate detection - Prevents adding the same citation twice (checks by DOI and text)
• DOI lookup - Search directly by DOI for precise results
• Quota visibility - Shows current CiteMe usage in the Obsidian status bar
• Mobile compatible - Works on both desktop and mobile Obsidian

Screenshots

Coming soon — screenshots will be added in a future release.

Installation

Manual Installation

1. Download main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css from the latest release
2. Create a folder citeme inside your vault's .obsidian/plugins/ directory
3. Copy the downloaded files into the citeme folder
4. Restart Obsidian and enable the plugin in Settings > Community Plugins

From Source

cd obsidian-citeme
npm install
npm run build

Copy main.js, manifest.json, and styles.css to your vault at .obsidian/plugins/citeme/.

Usage

Search Citations

• Command palette: Open command palette (Cmd/Ctrl+P) and type "Search citations"
• Ribbon icon: Click the book icon in the left sidebar
• Right-click menu: Select text, right-click, and choose "Search citation for selected text"

Insert Modes

Mode	What it inserts
Bibliography	Full formatted citation at cursor position
In-text	Parenthetical citation, e.g., (Vaswani et al., 2017)
Narrative	Narrative citation, e.g., Vaswani et al. (2017)
Both	In-text at cursor + full citation in References section

Access Tiers

• Anonymous / Free: 20 citations per month and 10 citation styles
• Pro styles: Marked as (Pro) in settings and require CiteMe Pro
• Quota reached: The plugin shows an actionable notice linking to CiteMe

DOI Lookup

Use "Search by DOI" from the command palette to find a paper by its DOI. This opens a detail view with all formatted citation variants before inserting.

References Section

When enabled (default), the plugin automatically:

1. Finds or creates a ## References heading in your note
2. Appends full bibliography entries alphabetically
3. Skips duplicates (matched by DOI or exact text)

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
CiteMe account	Link	Opens citeme.app to sign in or upgrade
Citation style	APA	Default citation format
Results limit	5	Number of search results (1-20)
Insert format	Bibliography	How citations are inserted
Sort by	Relevance	Result sorting order
Add to References	On	Auto-append to References section
References heading	## References	Heading text for the references section

Supported Citation Styles

Free styles: APA, MLA, ABNT, Chicago (Author-Date), Chicago (Note), IEEE, Harvard, Vancouver, AMA, ACS

Pro styles (33 additional): ABNT Numeric, Turabian, ASA, Bluebook, CSE, OSCOLA, MHRA, BMJ, Elsevier Harvard, SAGE Harvard, Taylor & Francis, Cambridge UP, Royal Society, DIN 1505, ISO 690 (German/French/Spanish/International), Nature, PLOS, Science, Cell, The Lancet, AIP, RSC, APSA, AAA, NP 405, Harvard (UCT/AGPS), AGLC4, Vancouver (Author-Date), McGill Guide

Pro styles are marked with (Pro) in the settings dropdown and require a CiteMe Pro subscription.

Network & Privacy Disclosure

This plugin connects to the CiteMe API (https://citeme.app) to search academic databases and format citations. Requests are tagged with X-Source: obsidian-plugin for channel attribution. Anonymous access is available without an account. See CiteMe's privacy policy at https://citeme.app/privacy.

Development

git clone https://github.com/danielnichiata96/obsidian-citeme.git
cd obsidian-citeme
npm install
npm run sync:saas-contract # Optional: refresh SaaS parity snapshot when ../citeme exists
npm run dev   # Watch mode (rebuilds on file change)
npm run build # Production build

Links

• CiteMe - The citation search engine powering this plugin
• Obsidian - A powerful knowledge base on top of a local folder of plain text Markdown files

License

MIT