Citations in Anara are more than formatted text — they are live links back to the source document in your library. Readers can click any citation to go directly to the paper it came from. If the paper is in your library, it opens in the document viewer at the relevant passage. For research writing, this is the difference between work that looks credible and work that is verifiable.
Inserting a citation
Place your cursor in the note where you want the citation to appear. Use the Search citation feature in the editor:
Open the citation search from the editor toolbar or inline command.
Type the title, author, or keywords for the paper you want to cite.
Select the document from the results.
Anara inserts an inline citation at your cursor, formatted according to your editor citation format setting.
The citation is linked to the document in your library. Anyone with access to your note can click it to go to the source.
Citation formats
Anara supports 12 citation formats for the editor: Numbered (default), APA (7th edition), MLA (9th edition), Harvard, Chicago, IEEE, CSE, ACS, Vancouver, ASA, AMA, and OSCOLA.
To change your editor citation format, go to Settings > Preferences and look under the Editor section.
Tip: Good to know: Chat and Editor have separate citation format settings. You can use numbered citations in AI chat and APA in your notes at the same time. Each is configured independently in Preferences.
Asking the AI to create citations
You can ask Anara to insert a citation for you without breaking your writing flow. In the Ask tab, type @ and select Create citation from the Tools menu. Tell the AI what you want to cite, and it will find the relevant document in your library and generate a formatted citation.
This is especially useful when you're in the middle of a paragraph and don't want to stop to search manually.
Changing the citation format
To change the format for new citations:
Go to Settings > Preferences.
Under Editor, find Citation format.
Select the format you want from the dropdown.
All new citations you insert will use the updated format. Existing citations in the note may need to be refreshed if you change the format after inserting them.
If something isn't working
A document isn't appearing in citation search. The document must be in your library. If you recently imported it, give it a moment to finish processing. Check the Full text status — see Understanding how Anara reads your documents.
The citation format looks wrong. Check your Editor citation format setting in Settings > Preferences. Remember that Chat and Editor formats are configured separately.