You can enable this gadget in the gadgets section of your preferences panel, by checking the box labelled "Citation expander: Automatically expand and format citations (uses Citation bot)".

This gadget automatically adds missing data to citations using citation templates, and makes corrections to their formatting. It allows you to run a script called "Citation bot" on whichever page you are viewing, via one of two methods:

  • If you are viewing the page, you can click on a link in the "Toolbox" section to expand and format any citations in the page.
  • If you are editing a page, a button underneath the edit box will expand any citations within the edit box. This means that:
    • You can check that the citations have been expanded to your liking (and make any further changes) before an article is modified, and
    • You can type a partial citation into an article (e.g. {{cite journal|pmid=12345}}), then have the bot expand this to a complete citation before you save the page.


For more information about the functions performed by Citation bot, see its user page or an introductory page. For information about the gadget's script, see User:Smith609/citations.