Reference count

Wikipedia references are citations that show where the information in an article comes from. They connect specific statements to trustworthy, published sources. References are one of the pillars of Wikipedia’s reliability, helping ensure that facts and data can be independently verified by readers.

Reference count is a Wikipedia-specific signal. It indicates the number of source citations that support a Wikipedia article (e.g., "23 references") at the time of reuse. This is a trust attribute that underscores Wikipedia’s reliability by giving external audiences a quick sense of the multiplicity of resources that are used to back the information provided.

Data sources

This section identifies where and how the data behind this signal can be obtained. It lists the relevant Wikimedia APIs, datasets, or metadata fields that reusers can rely on to implement the signal accurately and consistently.

Wikimedia Attribution API Beta

The Wikimedia Attribution API returns the number of references cited on a Wikipedia article through a reference_count property. To receive this signal, include trust_and_relevance in the expand parameter.

Reference documentation can be found in any wiki's REST API sandbox, such as the REST API sandbox on English Wikipedia →

Share feedback on this beta API →

Wikimedia Enterprise API

The Wikimedia Enterprise APIs do not return a dedicated reference count field for Wikipedia articles. The number of references and/or citations can be derived in two ways:

• When using Structured Contents endpoints, you can count the number of unique citation identifiers, or the number of objects in the references array.
• When not using Structured Contents endpoints, use HTML parsing to derive the number of rendered citations by parsing the article HTML content from the article_body object.

See the Wikimedia Enterprise API documentation →

Crawling and self-parsing

Crawlers can self-parse the number of references included in Wikipedia articles.

Implementation guidance

Minimum requirements

• Indicate all article references as a single count (e.g., “23 references").

• Always display the number of references included in the article being reused. Avoid aggregating references across language versions of an article, or using the reference value corresponding to a different language variant of the source.

• Keep the indicator neutral. Use a clear label (“References”) and a simple number. Avoid phrasings or visual representations that could cause this attribute to be interpreted as an indicator of quality. The presence of references is enough to allow readers to infer credibility.

• Keep Reference count signals secondary to essential attribution (such as Source, Link, and Title), and avoid replacing or obscuring these signals.

Best practices

• Pair with complementary attribution signals to increase impact. When combined with Last update or Contributor count, the Reference count signal can help highlight the scale and recency of collaboration.

• Consider clarifying the meaning of the Reference count signal using complementary information (e.g., displaying a tooltip that specifies that this is the “Number of sources cited in a Wikipedia article”).

Reuse scenarios

Search

Recommended

Showing how many references support an article reinforces Wikipedia’s verifiability and reliability.

Learn more about attribution in this context →

AI assistants

Recommended

Exposing reference counts builds confidence that the underlying information is evidence based.

Learn more about attribution in this context →