The power of citations has, for better or (very likely) worse, caused them to be commoditized and used in many ways that they were not originally intended. For example, researchers' impact and productivity is said to be measured by their "h-index", a measurement of a scholar's most cited papers and the number of citations they have received \cite{Hirsch_2010}. Journals prestige is measured by the impact factor, which is based on the average citation count of articles published by a journal over a two-year span \cite{Garfield_2006}.
Because citations are so valuable, they have been for many years controlled by different stakeholders and inaccessible to many researchers and policy makers. Today, that's changing with the Initiative for Open Citations, a movement and organization that aims to de-commoditize citations and make them open and freely available to the public and researchers.
We, at Authorea, are excited to be part of this initiative alongside other great companies, projects, and initiatives. From day one, we have taken citations very seriously. Our citation tool has been our most important features since the beginning: we allow authors to search, format and add citations extremely easily when they are writing their manuscript. And every published document automagically contains a list of (open!) citations at the end, as a bibliography. This document, included! See below :)