1. A method for determining valid citation patterns in text within an electronic document, the method comprising: accessing from a memory, at least one citation pattern having a set of citation components, each citation component associated with a set of citation component criteria; comparing text in the electronic document with each set of citation component criteria; identifying citation components in the text; analyzing a pattern of the identified citation components by comparing the pattern to the at least one citation pattern; and determining valid citation patterns in the text which correspond to the at least one citation pattern.