[esafak]

If your article is digital, just make it so that the full citation is revealed on hover (as a "tooltip"), so users don't have to jump back and forth.

edit: Tooltips supplement the traditional reference section. They are not to be printed.

[self]

As an aside, since hover doesn't work with touchscreens (phones and tablets), it might be useful to have a typographic note next to the bibkey that shows/hides the popup on touch. What's a good note to use?

[esafak]

I'd use a modal dialog in that case.

[creer]

Fair and useful. But then how well do tooltips print? Is the printed version complete? If the tooltip is just the citation or footnote, then the printout is complete.

[dredmorbius]

Screen and print formats can be defined via @media rules. There are also media features which can be specified or queried of a user agent.

<https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@media>

Depending on the accuracy of the client, this could well give differing behaviours for desktop, mobile, and print output. HTML is flexible, very few designers seem willing to embrace this.

[g15jv2dp]

Who cares how tooltips print? I happen to be a (millennial) academic. I cannot remember the last time I actually printed an article.

[creer]

Saved the PDF? Either way, it's great that it works for you - and that's not quite yet everyone. So the author might care.