Write Citations in Org and Export to LaTeX
Motivation. This post considers handling citations in Org, generating nicely formatted reference entries in HTML, and exporting to LaTeX directly with properly generated Bib(La)TeX citation commands.
I’ve used Emacs Org mode for note-taking for years. After implementing the write-in-org-view-in-HTML workflow introduced in post:2024-03-06::Seamless Writing and Rendering with Emacs Org, I even enjoy writing math-heavy content because it offers both elegant editor previews and instant HTML rendering. Yet LaTeX remains the standard choice for academic writing, and I still need it for paper submissions. Indeed, HTML prioritizes web-friendly visuals, while LaTeX excels at print-ready typesetting for formal contexts.
My current workflow involves drafting in Org mode with HTML export, then switching to LaTeX for final typesetting once the manuscript stabilizes. It handles basic markup and equations well but lacks a critical component: citations. When I first adopted Org mode as the primary note format, there was no standard solution for managing citations and I had to rely on thrid party packages.
Recently, I accidentally noticed that Org has incorporated a nice citation system since 2021. Upon investigating, I was pleasantly to find it mature enough to unify my workflow: write in Org, preview in HTML, with the option to export directly to LaTeX for future typesetting adjustments. In this post, I'll briefly introduce Org Cite and how I integrate it into my workflow.
Overview of Org Cite
Org Cite aims to provide easy citation management in Org and also serves as a solid foundation for more sophisticated customization. For a quick tutorial, I recommend the post by Timothy. For more details, please refer to Section 15 Citation Handling in the manual. Denton (2024) also wrote a series of posts on this topic.
The basic usage in Org is simple. Just like how we do in LaTeX, writing citations in Org involving three parts: specifying the bibliography, using citation commands, and printing the bibliography section.
#+BIBLIOGRAPHY: post.bib Parenthesis citation can be done via the standard command [cite:@key]. For narrative citations, use the text variant [cite/t:@key]. #+PRINT_BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Please refer to the references mentioned before for detailed explanations and advanced usages.
Export to HTML
Org Cite uses export processors as its backend to support export to
various formats, including plain text, html and LaTeX. The default
processor does not support specifying citation styles and here we
choose the CSL (Citation Style Language) processor, which is included
in the citeproc package.
#+CITE_EXPORT: csl apa.csl apa.csl
Note that the APA citation style apa.csl is located under
~/Zotero/styles, which is shipped with Zotero installation. To tell
Emacs to search that folder for style files, use
(setq org-cite-csl-styles-dir "~/Zotero/styles")
Now the bibliography section in the HTML export should be correctly formatted in APA citation style. We can write CSS rules to further customize the appearance of reference entries.
Export to LaTeX
For LaTeX export, use the biblatex export processor.
#+CITE_EXPORT: biblatex
Highlight the text to be exported and press C-c C-e RET l RET L. This
will translate org-cite commands like [cite:@key] or [cite/t:@key] to
proper biblatex commands such as \cite{key} or \textcite{key}; see
here for a quick reference of supported citation commands in org-cite
and their corresponding biblatex commands.
References
Appendix: Emacs Init File
For convenience, I include the following sectin in my Emacs init file. Note that I use a global bibliography for convenience, which is generated and regularly updated by Better BibTeX for Zotero.
(use-package citeproc :ensure t :config (setq org-cite-csl-styles-dir "~/Zotero/styles") (setq org-cite-export-processors '((latex biblatex) (t csl "apa.csl" "apa.csl"))) (setq org-cite-global-bibliography '("~/.emacs.d/mylibrary.bib")) )