6.3 File Refs

Refs are unique identifiers for files. For example, a note for a website may contain a ref:

#+title: Google
#+roam_key: https://www.google.com/

These keys allow references to the key to show up in the backlinks buffer. For instance, with the example above, if another file then links to https://www.google.com, that will show up as a “Ref Backlink”.

These keys also come in useful for when taking website notes, using the roam-ref protocol (see Roam Protocol).

org-ref citation keys can also be used as refs:

#+title: Neural Ordinary Differential Equations
#+roam_key: cite:chen18_neural_ordin_differ_equat

Figure: org-ref-citelink

You may assign multiple refs to a single file, for example when you want multiple papers in a series to share the same note, or an article has a citation key and a URL at the same time.