The reference part follows the syntax: {separator}{authorship{,}}{titleEditionVolume}{:}{detail}{.}{year}
Zoological new combinations should not have a reference part, since in zoology, it is not common to mention the new combination reference.
The separator between the reference part and the preceding authorship may be a comma , or an
in(surrounded by whitespaces). The comma indicates a book whereas the
in stands either
for a journal article or a book section. If the in is not followed by a comma, the parser
interprets the reference as an article; otherwise, as a book section. Reference type parsing
should be improved in future.
An author is only available for book sections. Articles and book sections are differentiated from each other by comparing the first four words that follow the separator. If these words include a comma and the words before the comma are likely to represent an author, the reference is recognized as a book section. Otherwise, it will be treated as an article. In both cases, a warning is thrown that differentiation is not possible.
The TitleEditionVolume part includes the title itself as well as optional edition part
and volume parts. The title itself allows most character combinations but care must be taken
if a : is included as this is the separator for the subsequent detail part. Special characters
like & and - are only allowed if preceded and followed immediately by ordinary characters.
Ordinary brackets are allowed. Edition and volume are separated by whitespace if only one
of them exists. If both exist the later is separated by a comma. Both are optional, so all
four of the following formats are valid:
Sp. Pl. Sp. Pl. ed. 3 Sp. Pl. ed. 3, 4 Sp. Pl. 4
As can be seen, the edition is recognized by a preceding ed., whereas the volume is just
a number (or a number followed by another number in brackets - e.g. 4(5) ).
The detail part is separated by a column : from the preceding titleEditonVolume part and
is separated from the year by . (botanical names only). A number of typical detail information
is recognized as either pure page numbers (345) or ranges (345-348). Page numbers may be
preceded by p.(e.g. p. 345) or pp.(e.g. pp. 345-348). Abbreviations indicating special parts of a
reference such as fig. or tab. are recognized as well. Roman numbers are not detected
at the moment.