Silencing citations in scientific papers

The regular expression (RegEx) given below will make @Voice app skip reading aloud citations in parenthesis often found in scientific papers, formatted similar to these:

(Derwing, Rossiter, & Munro, 2002; Thomas, 2004)

(American Psychological Association, 1993; Arredondo et al., 1996; Council of National Psychological Associations for the Advancement of Ethnic Minorities, 2000; Cross, Bazron, Dennis, & Isaacs, 1989; Dulles Conference Task Force, 1978; C. Hall, 1997; Korman, 1974; Marsella, 1998; President’s Commission on Mental Health, 1978; Ridley, Mendoza, Kanitz, Angermeier, & Zenk, 1994; D W Sue, Arredondo, & McDavis, 1992; D W Sue, Bingham, Porche-Burke, & Vasquez, 1999; D W Sue et al., 1982; D W Sue, Carter, et al., 1998)

Here are instructions on how to create a speech replacement to skip these citations when reading aloud:
 
In @Voice app, press menu (3 vertical dots button top right of screen), press Settings - Edit speech. Press the [+] button on top to create a new speech replacement. Then enter the following:
 
Replace type:   RegEx
Pattern:   
(\([^)]*,\s*\d\d\d\d(\)|(;[^)])*)\))|(\([^)]*,\s*\d\d\d\d(\)|(;[^)]*))$)|(^[^()]*,\s*\d\d\d\d(\)|(;[^)])*)\))|(^\s*\d\d\d\d\))
Replace with:  - leave empty for silence
 
Note - the "Pattern" field content should be all in one line. It is very complex and every character matters, so it would be best to open this page on your Android device in a web browser, copy the "Pattern" content starting from the very first "(" character and up to and including the last ")". Then switch to @Voice app, edit speech and paste this expression into the "Pattern" field.
 
If you want, instead of leaving the "Replace with:" field empty, you can enter there some other text, for example "(citations)". In this case you will hear one word "citations" instead of the long list of names and years of publications.
 
More, background info:
You might ask, why is this expression so long and complex? The “Edit speech” feature in @Voice works within one “sentence” only, or rather a fragment of text that @Voice sends as one piece to TTS engine. These pieces are normally sentences, but sometimes sentence splitting cannot distinguish between a dot after an abbreviation that @Voice app does not know, and a dot ending a sentence. Further, some TTS engines limit the maximum length of text to about 500 characters, so if a sentence is longer, I have to split it.
 
Some citations are longer than 500 characters, so Edit speech cannot handle them well. Still I managed to build the above Regular Expression (RegEx) that matches either a complete citation within one phrase (one yellow highlight in @Voice), or a partial one that is broken off at the end of the phrase, or continues from the previous phrase and ends in the current one. 
 
Of course, if you manage to improve the above RegEx replacement or have better ideas, please share them in this thread by posting below. Happy and productive listening!
 
Greg

Well, these citations have different format that does not match RegEx created for scientific papers... The following substitution should work for you:
 
Replace type:   RegEx
Pattern:   \([^)]*?\d+:\d+\)
Replace with:  - leave empty for silence
 
 
Greg

Sorry about late answer. For me the RegEx expression works fine for the "(I João 3:4; 5:17)" part, so maybe you mis-typed some characters in the "Pattern" field, or added unnecessary spaces in front, at the end or in the middle of expression "\([^)]*?\d+:\d+\)". There are other problems though - @Voice does not recognize "Gên." and "Rom." as valid abbreviations for Portuguese and ends sentences on each dot there. I must think of some other solutions to the problem of abbreviations...

They could be added to a list of known abbreviations, say for Portuguese language. It could be done as follows:
 
1. create a text file named abbrev-por.txt. the contents of this file should be:
 
Gên.
Rom.
 
It could contain more abbreviations if needed, one per line, similar to the above.
 
2. Save that file into the directory named .config (exactly like this, starting with a dot), under the main data folder of @Voice app. You could find out what this folder is on your device by opening the Setting menu in @Voice, the press "@Voice folder location". Look at "Location:" line near the top, note the folder path, but do not change anything in there, just press the Back button.
 
Note: any file or folder with a name starting with a dot, like .config, is considered a "hidden" file or folder on Android and similar systems. This won't matter if you look at the folders after connecting your phone say to a PC computer, it will show you and let you access all files and folder, including the ones with names starting with a dot.
 
If you want to do this on Android device only, you would need to use a good file explorer app, set to show also hidden files and folders, such as "ES File Explorer" found in Google Play, best the paid version (the free one is not so good).
 
Greg