### Author:  [@robbie.morrison](https://meta.discourse.org/u/robbie.morrison)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2021, 7:40am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/in-post-referencing-support-feature-request/190638/1 "2021-05-17T07:40:48Z")
Hello all, I admin two sites which, in cultural terms, sit between academic discourse and public policy analysis (one [example](https://forum.openmod.org)). And consequently, this kind of idiom is common:
> Morrison (2018) said xyz.
And later that reference is recorded, ofttimes in its own H1 section titled “References” and placed at the end:
> Morrison, Robbie (April 2018). [“Energy system modeling: public transparency, scientific reproducibility, and open development”](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X17300949/pdfft). _Energy Strategy Reviews_. **20** : 49–63. ISSN [2211-467X](https://www.worldcat.org/issn/2211-467X). doi:[10.1016/j.esr.2017.12.010](https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2017.12.010). Open access.
I looked though this site and found only this [posting](https://meta.discourse.org/t/communities-at-the-research-practice-interface-breaking-the-ivory-tower/68574) of relevance.
Also noting the way that Wikipedia handles referencing using `[` tags, complete with great mouse‑over support these days. Note too that this tag is specific to Wikipedia and is not official HTML.
I presume no similar functionality exists in Discourse. The target references themselves can be set in markdown (as occurs above in the second quote). I am not suggesting that the various cite templates that Wikipedia offers are necessary. Nor that integration with a citation management utility (such as BibTeX, Zotero, and eventually [WikiCite](https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCite)) is needed either.
Any pointers, thoughts, and/or expressions of support welcome, R
---
]
### Author:  [@robbie.morrison](https://meta.discourse.org/u/robbie.morrison)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2021, 1:08pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/in-post-referencing-support-feature-request/190638/2 "2021-05-17T13:08:12Z")
A **mockup** of a mouse‑over feature modeled after Wikipedia:
---
### Author:  [@Johani](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Johani)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2021, 1:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/in-post-referencing-support-feature-request/190638/3 "2021-05-17T13:09:45Z")
Have a look here
> [@Discourse Footnote](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-footnote/84533):
>
> discourse2Summary Discourse Footnote allows users to create markdown footnotes in posts.open_bookInstall Guide This plugin is bundled with Discourse core. There is no need to install the plugin separately. Enabling Footnote The Footnote plugin is default enabled but can be disabled/enabled from the admin/plugins page: [enable footnote] Features Once enabled, you can add footnotes to your posts by typing them in like this: A sentence that needs a footnote. ^[The foo…
---
### Author:  [@robbie.morrison](https://meta.discourse.org/u/robbie.morrison)
#### Post date: [May 17, 2021, 2:10pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/in-post-referencing-support-feature-request/190638/4 "2021-05-17T14:10:02Z")
@Joe, thanks. I’ll experiment. Numbered references are not my most favored citation style but one can mix numbered references with authors named passively in the text too. That is exactly how Wikipedia works, of course. And clearly the use of extended Markdown has advantages over inventing a new discourse‑specific HTML tag as earlier suggested. I guess the backstory is that discourse is increasingly being deployed in research contexts. Again thanks for your follow‑up. R
---
### Author:  [@robbie.morrison](https://meta.discourse.org/u/robbie.morrison)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2021, 5:53am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/in-post-referencing-support-feature-request/190638/5 "2021-05-18T05:53:38Z")
Any reason why **[discourse-footnote](https://github.com/discourse/discourse-footnote)** does not have an MIT (or similar) license notice?
---
### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [May 18, 2021, 5:56am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/in-post-referencing-support-feature-request/190638/6 "2021-05-18T05:56:03Z")
Bug… missing license file was added.