Skip to Main Content
WAB Faculty & Staff

NoodleTools for Students: Use Quick Cite / Export

How to use Noodletools A student's guide

How to Use Quick Cite

Quick cite lets you copy and paste a pre-formatted source reference from a website or online database.

Using Quick Cite to create a citation

Copy the source reference into the Manually-edited citation text area provided. Follow the steps in the yellow box to review and make corrections where needed. Use the formatting Guide at the top of the page to help you.

Quick Cite citation form

Entering the publication or copyright date of the source will help sort the entry in relation to your other references. If you leave the field blank, NoodleTools still does its best to parse the date out of the reference you have pasted in.

When you save, the reference appears in the source list with a note, "This is a copy of a preformatted citation." This note does not appear when the bibliography is exported or printed.

Import using a DOI number

What if we find a source that is not in one of our databases / does not have a NoodleTools import option?

Many students use Google Scholar to find reputable journal articles that are open access. If the source cannot be imported through NoodleTools you have two options

  • Use QuickCite by copying and pasting the citation (not always accurate and not easy to edit)
  • Using the DOI* (Digital Object Identifier) to import the citation

*A Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is a unique, persistent identifying number for a document published online. It appears on a document or in a bibliographic citation as an alphanumeric string of characters that that acts as an active link to the original digital object (journal article, report, etc.).

To import the citation follow these steps:

  1. In your NoodleTools project select "+ Add Source"
  2. Select the appropriate source type (e.g. Database / Article)
  3. Go to the article you want to cite and find the DOI
  4. Copy the DOI link
  5. Paste the link into the DOI field
  6. Press "Search"
  7. Check the reference
  8. Press "Import data"
  9. For the IB we also need to add the date of access - you can click on "today" and today's date will be added
  10. Check any error messages - for example articles from Google Scholar may not have the Database Name so you'll have to add the Database where the article is usually found.

DOI import

How to export / import a citation

All our Databases include a functionality for exporting a citation of an article or journal article or portion of a book or an image directly into NoodleTools. This makes it super easy and efficient to "cite as you go"

The video below will explain where to find the "cite" button on our most commonly used groups of databases

  • Credo
  • Infobase
  • Gale
  • JSTOR

Step by step process:

  1. Open a unique project in NoodleTools
  2. Find the article you want to cite from in one of our databases
  3. Locate the "cite" button
  4. Click on "cite"
  5. Choose MLA
  6. Select "export to NoodleTools"

From the "import" Screen

  1. Check the reference is correct
  2. Choose the correct Project
  3. Click "Import references"
  4. Verify the reference was successfully copied

NT Import