Scrivener’s content files are RTF. Most of the associated support files are XML.
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Not unanimous. I am working quite a lot with citations and it is the cornerstone of my workflow that it is a third party app—the “wonderfully bloated” Bookends—that handles the references and the citations.
The simple reason for that is that although Scrivener is my main and unconditionally loved writing app for all texts which are ready to be sent out into the world, it is not the only app I am using for work related texts.
When I am quoting from print books almost always I use Drafts on my iPhone. I collect these quotes and other material in DEVONthink, my knowledge repository. And move the quotes into a Scrivener project when I need to.
This only works because I can use the citations from Bookends in all three apps—and in all others I might use in the future. Because there is no Bookends integration but Bookends is a native macOS/iPadOS app and uses on of its basic features, the clipboard. Getting citations from Bookends into Scrivener is very easy and has no need for any workaround.
If you don’t call finalizing—is that the processing you refer to?—the citations and generating the bibliography in the compiled document and not in the Scrivener project itself a workaround, that is.
And yes, I use temporary citations, i. e. citations not yet formatted with a style, for all these quotes. That way I will be able to choose which format I will like or what will be recommended for a text in the however far future. On the other hand this calls for a last step of formatting—processing?—the citations in the Compile output.
Would I be against Scrivener doing this in-project or in-Compile? No, of course not. If it then worked for all of the many possible Compile formats (and not just with RTF and DOCX as it does now with Bookends) that would be a major improvement. But if Scrivener had integrated some conduit to a reference software I could not use with the other software that is part of my workflow I probably would not use it.
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I appreciate the discussion points here. A middle-ground would be a more built-in way of calling Pandoc, or more generally pre-processing and post-processing pipelines. Many of us have hacked together our own systems, but it’s been a huge front-loaded investment (thankfully with much return on that investment). With every hacked-together system, there is the ever-present risk of some component breaking. So a new Compiler with better options for pre-/post-processing using Pandoc or Quarto, etc., would be well-received.
That said, Scrivener is many things to many people, but it simply can’t be everything to everybody. It is a lovely space for creating drafts that get exported into some destination format for further work. Converting a document into another format is the signature strength of Pandoc, too – which is why Pandoc would dovetail nicely with Scrivener’s Compile step.
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The proposal here is to rely on third-party citation managers[1] — no one has proposed building reference management into Scrivener. What the proposal is, just as our beloved compiler already make caption styles turn into captions, or adds options to insert headers and footers, to translate metadata etc., for the compiler to turn the temporary citations already provided by a third-party citation manager into formatted text just as an RTF italic is turned into PDF italic text.
There are many tools already written, and so at its simplest the compiler pipes text in and gets formatting out. L&L do not need to handle citations, do not need to manage a database, do not need to develop translation styles. It is even easier if Scrivener formally bundles Pandoc, Scrivener’s MMD outputs have been battle-tested for years already so we know it works. The compiler needs some settings in the UI[2] and be able to pipe text, something it is more than capable of doing already, as evidenced by the many output formats that are not RTF Scrivener handles already.
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But the compiler already converts RTF into many outputs, including text and markdown, i.e. the format Scrivener writes data to disk in is does not preclude a workflow in the compiler.
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For the interested reader, I will link to a portion of a related discussion.
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Scrivener already uses the concept of compile a document and about the concerns of
Scrivener already rely on third-party services, like the MMD compiler and other tools to generate other formats. The real point here is that the pandoc is much more mature now and offer out of the box all the things needed for structural writing. This would improve and simplify Scrivener capabilities, that is the point for consideration. Today they may have headaches to adapt their internal rtf format with pandoc, but I am sure that for the concept of compiling document, this is will payoff very soon. Also, from the same engine, they can export for all formats that they already work today.
You are already working with citations, this endorse my point. What you describe is an expensive workaround, nothing more than this.
I understand that have people with very ‘wonderful’ workflows. This reminds me the hilarious discussions in the MPU forum, the so-called Mac Power Users (“Power” in a very interesting sense). In this place you will find the real Kings of Bloat. There, you will see how people love to spend $1000 per month and still having headaches to integrate all their 500 game changers apps for huge productive.™ Or how it is very interesting to change your golden workflow every month for maximum-plus productive™
For sure you can make an expensive bloated combo with DEVONthink, Bookends, Tinderbox, and whenever you want. That is not the point.
The core of the discussion is that Scrivener is really a software solution for writing, and our suggestion is to improve the compiler to make it a complete solution for document export.
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One step closer! Now it is just the main file and some associated files. 
@nontroppo @WritingGuy some new feature updates in an external reference management and research tool I’ve been using for a few years prompted me to share a possible solution to your citation needs.
This brief screenshare gives you an overview of the reference management and citation functionality in the tool.
“Logically” looks like an interesting new platform for academic writing.
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Definitely. I’ve found it to be a handy tool for processing large documents (and sets of documents) as part of my broader knowledge management, research, synthesis and writing process.
While I appreciate seeing new tools, this just seems to be yet another generic online writing tool + basic reference manager + AI hype. Not sure how this can replace Scrivener’s detailed and comprehensive writing workflow + professional reference manager like Bookends, and it is yet-another subscription service. Not for me.
My personal view is that Scrivener + Bookends + Pandoc already solves all academic writing needs, with the caveat that for less geeky users a better way to automate a citeproc engine in the compiler would open the door for less technical academic users to benefit from Scrivener’s wonderful workflow. The title of this thread is misleading, because Scrivener already takes citation seriously (you can automate calling ref manager from prefs, nothing in Scrivener stops using citations). It could take it “more” seriously by refining the compiler workflow as described in this and other threads…
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In case the point was missed - as it seems to have been - my intention was to share a tool that I personally have found useful in research and reference management in case it was useful to other users here in their research and citation management workflow. I made no mention of it “replacing” Scrivener as a writing tool. Objectively, you haven’t had sufficient time to actually get to grips with whether the tool is “yet another generic online writing tool etc”
I don’t really take a position on any individual’s preferences, tool stack or workflow - if a platform like this is helpful for you, great. If not, also great.
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Peace! We’re all friends here. It is good to share workflows and even new contenders on the scene, or apps in the marketplace. I learned about Quarto and Typst from this forum, years ago.
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Personally, I’m anxious to see if L&L’s New Writing App hits the sweet spot for academic writing. It may retain a lot of the features of Scrivener that we love but may be easier to integrate into workflows. I’m hopeful for an updated post here describing some more details.
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Just curious. Scrivener now is focused on writing/editing and when ready compile to output format. The new app is likely to be pretty much the same for writing/editing which my experience is the biggest part of academic workflows. And compiling, once setup, just “rinse and repeat”.
How is your academic workflow different? Less emphasis on writing/editing than other forms of document creation?
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True and sorry, i didn’t mean to come off quite so brusquely; but this thread is about citation processing after writing is done, not research or management, and so as this tool seems to do that too that is what I was responding too. Perhaps you can post this solution to the “Other software” category and also if you have a workflow you think my benefit others, we do have a wiki for reference software where your suggestion would certainly be helpful for others: Using Scrivener with reference software (wiki)
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Not quite, at least for me, as academic journals often require different formatting of submission requirements, and we “shop” a paper from a high-impact journal first then reformat for the next journal on the list until we get accepted 
– also each grant applied for has different formatting requirements, and coursework or presentations or formal letters, experiment protocols are each different etc. This all means that compiling is not quite rinse and repeat (well my solution is to use pandoc recipes so I can quickly adjust my output by changing the pandoc recipe)…
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Please excuse my obtuseness. Please clarify, what exactly is it that you want Scrivener to do that it is not doing now when used in conjunction with Bookends?
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