Unique identifier for a Reference record, which includes follows thIS 12-character structure:
Data entry details:
This is a required field.
The reference code should be written on the physical reference.
Sections of the reference code:
Reference type (1 character): See Reference type for possible values.
Year (2 characters): Last 2 digits of the publication (or non-publication) year
1st 3 letters of author's last name (3 characters) If the author’s last name is only 2 letters, use the first letter of the first name for the 3rd character. For example, use A12LIH01NAUS for a citation beginning “Li, H., and K. Sattler. 2012.”
Tie breaker (2 characters):
Tie breakers are used to distinguish between references from the same author (or authors with the same or similar last names) written in the same year. For example, if the Virginia Division of Natural Heritage has two articles by Jones for 1995, one should be assigned a reference code of A95JON01VAUS and the second A95JON02VAUS, with successive documents assigned the codes A95JON03VAUS, A95JON04VAUS, etc. The full numeric range 01-99 should be used for these two-character tie breakers; when these are exhausted, A0#A9, B0#B9,…Z0#Z9 should be used. If you run out of letter-digit combinations, use letter-letter tiebreakers, starting with AA, AB, etc. through ZY, ZZ which gives an additional 26x26=676 tiebreakers.
If there are two different authors with the same last name (or the same first three letters of the last name), an agency may choose to assign a different series of numbers to each author. For example, John Jones’ articles written in 1995 might be coded A95JON11…through A95JON19…, and Robert Jones’ articles written in 1995 might use be coded A95JON21…through A95JON29… . If there were more than 9 documents for a given person in a particular year, letters could be used in the second byte of this two-character tie breaker: A95JON2A, A95JON2B,…A95JON2Z.
State/Province where agency is located (2 characters): 2-character subnation code (see subnation database table) for the installation maintaining the reference record. Includes postal codes for states and provinces, plus "TV" for "Tennessee Valley Authority", "NN" for "Navajo Nation", etc. Natureserve Central uses primarily "HQ" (headquarters), "NA" (North America), and "IC" (International Classification).
Nation (2 characters): iso Nation code (see nation database table) for the nation of the installation maintaining the reference record. So far this is only CA, MX, US, or LA (Latin America). Or in Central database, "EC" can be used after "IC" for community references (International Classification of Ecological Communities).
Reference Code Suffix: The last 4 characters (State/Province + Nation) are known as the Reference Code Suffix and identify the installation that maintains the reference record. Some Biotics validations and warnings check that this suffix is correct for the installation.
