Citing a record

A record is only useful to scholarship if it can be pointed at precisely and still be there later.

The identifier

Every record carries a Vaayil identifier of the form VAY-M-00001. It is permanent, opaque and never reused. It encodes nothing (not the date, not the place and not the order of publication), because an identifier that encodes information becomes wrong when the information changes.

The URL

Record URLs are permanent. A record’s address is fixed at publication and does not change when its name, its dating or its condition is revised. If a record is withdrawn, its URL explains why rather than returning a 404.

The version

Records are versioned. Version 1.0 is first publication; the version increments when a substantive field changes, such as a tolerance established, an attribution revised or a condition reassessed. Cite the version you consulted and the claim you are quoting stays traceable even after the record has moved on.

Formats

Every record page offers its citation in plain text, BibTeX and RIS, generated from the record’s own fields rather than typed by hand. Copy the one your bibliography wants.

Where a DOI has been minted, it is published in the record’s documentation panel and should be preferred over the URL. Where no DOI exists yet, the record says so and the field is not hidden.