Indexia

INDEXIA BLOG

Index Locorum: AI-Powered Citation Indexing for Classics and Legal Scholarship

Indexia Team•

An index locorum is not a subject index. It does not tell you what a book is about. It tells you what a book cites. Every reference to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, every invocation of Brown v. Board of Education, every footnote pointing to a passage in Homer — cataloged, normalized, and organized for the reader who needs to trace an argument back to its sources.

Creating one by hand is among the most tedious tasks in scholarly publishing. A 300-page monograph on Roman law might contain hundreds of citations scattered across text, footnotes, and endnotes, each in slightly different format. The indexer must find them all, standardize them, and arrange them in the conventional order that scholars expect.

Indexia now does this automatically for two domains: classical texts and legal authorities.

What You Get

Upload your PDF. Select "Classics" or "Legal" as your project type. In roughly 30 minutes, you receive a complete citation index with every reference extracted, normalized to canonical form, and organized in the standard scholarly order.

For classics, that means citations grouped by author, then by work, then by passage — with Stephanus numbers for Plato, Bekker numbers for Aristotle, book-and-line for Homer, and so on.

For legal documents, that means a proper Table of Authorities: cases organized alphabetically, followed by constitutional provisions, statutes, regulations, and secondary sources — following Bluebook or OSCOLA conventions depending on your jurisdiction.

How Classical Citation Indexing Works

The AI reads every page of your manuscript and identifies citations to ancient and medieval authors. It recognizes:

  • Standard abbreviations: Arist. EN, Pl. Resp., Hom. Il., Thuc.
  • Multiple citation systems: Stephanus pagination (Plato), Bekker numbers (Aristotle), book-and-line (Homer, Virgil), book.chapter.section (Thucydides, Livy)
  • Fragments and editions: fr. 123 Radt, DK 22 B 53
  • Inscriptions: CIL VI 1234, IG I3 16, SEG 34.558
  • Papyri: P.Oxy. 11.1356, BGU IV 1024

Abbreviations are resolved against the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD), Liddell-Scott-Jones (LSJ), or Thesaurus Linguae Latinae (TLL) systems. You choose which abbreviation standard to use during project setup.

The result is a citation index where "Arist. EN 1094a1" appears under its full heading: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1094a1, with every page in your book where that passage is referenced.

How Legal Citation Indexing Works

Legal citation indexing follows a parallel approach, tailored to the conventions of legal scholarship and practice.

The AI identifies:

  • Case citations: Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. (1 Cranch) 137 (1803)
  • Statute references: 42 U.S.C. 1983, Civil Rights Act of 1964
  • Regulations: 17 C.F.R. 240.10b-5
  • Constitutional provisions: U.S. Const. art. III, 1
  • International sources: ECHR, EU Treaty provisions

Citations are organized into the standard categories that courts and publishers expect: Cases first, then Constitutional Provisions, Statutes, Regulations, Rules, and Other Authorities. Within each category, entries are sorted alphabetically.

The system recognizes both Bluebook (standard in U.S. legal writing) and OSCOLA (Oxford Standard for the Citation of Legal Authorities, used in UK and Commonwealth jurisdictions) formatting conventions. It maps 80+ legal reporters — from the U.S. Reports and Federal Reporter to the All England Law Reports and EU Court Reports.

Configuration

During project setup, you choose your citation domain and configure the specifics:

Classics options:

  • Abbreviation system (OCD, LSJ, TLL, or custom)
  • Source categories to include (literary texts, inscriptions, papyri)
  • Number formatting (Chicago Manual inclusive ranges or raw)

Legal options:

  • Citation system (Bluebook, OSCOLA, or mixed)
  • Jurisdictions to include (US Federal, US State, UK, EU, International)
  • Authority categories to include (cases, statutes, regulations, constitutional provisions, secondary sources)

Export

Export your completed citation index to Word (.docx) or RTF with proper hierarchical formatting:

  • Authors as section headings, works as sub-headings, passages with page lists (classics)
  • Authority categories as section headings, citations with page lists (legal)
  • Professional typography with consistent spacing and indentation

The exported file is ready to drop into your manuscript or submit to your publisher.

Who Uses This

  • Classicists writing commentaries, monographs, or critical editions that cite ancient sources extensively
  • Legal scholars producing law review articles, treatises, or casebooks with Tables of Authorities
  • Philosophers working on texts that engage heavily with primary sources from Plato to Kant
  • Historians of antiquity whose work references inscriptions, papyri, and literary sources
  • Law firms preparing appellate briefs that require comprehensive Tables of Authorities

Get Started

Upload your PDF at indexia.tech/editor/new?type=classics for classical citation indexing, or indexia.tech/editor/new?type=legal for legal citation indexing.

Questions? Contact admin@indexia.tech