bibliographyonly

Bibliographyonly is a term used to describe resources, datasets, or modes in information systems that contain only bibliographic metadata about cited works, without the full text, abstracts, or other content. In practice, this can appear in library catalogs, citation databases, or export files that list references with fields such as author, title, year, publication venue, volume, issue, pages, DOI, ISBN, language, and access details. The primary goal is to support discovery, citation, and interoperability while avoiding licensing or storage obligations associated with distributing full text.

Formats commonly used for bibliography-only records include MARC, Dublin Core, BIBFRAME, RIS, BibTeX, and other metadata schemas; many systems also expose metadata via protocols such as OAI-PMH for harvesting and interoperability. Applications include indexing references in institutional repositories, providing reference lists in scholarly work, enabling reference linking through DOIs, and allowing researchers to build bibliographies without accessing full documents.

For citation managers, bibliography-only entries facilitate quick import and organization of sources, often with links to licensed or open-access full-text when available. Limitations include the absence of abstracts or full-text content, which can hinder initial evaluation of sources; metadata quality and consistency are critical, and incomplete records reduce usefulness. The approach helps with efficient storage and licensing compliance but may require separate mechanisms to retrieve full text, such as linking to publishers, repositories, or interlibrary loan systems.

In modern digital libraries, bibliography-only records are often interwoven with full-text holdings, providing a layered access model from discovery to access. See also bibliographic database, metadata, digital library.