diff --git a/classes/citation/CitationListTokenizerFilter.php b/classes/citation/CitationListTokenizerFilter.php
index 2975ae7a264..8f766371b49 100644
--- a/classes/citation/CitationListTokenizerFilter.php
+++ b/classes/citation/CitationListTokenizerFilter.php
@@ -56,10 +56,8 @@ public function &process(&$input)
         } else {
             $citations = explode("\n", $input);
         }
-        // 4) Remove numbers from the beginning of each citation.
-        foreach ($citations as $index => $citation) {
-            $citations[$index] = PKPString::regexp_replace('/^\s*[\[#]?[0-9]+[.)\]]?\s*/', '', $citation);
-        }
+        // 4) Remove whitespace from the beginning and the end of each citation.
+        $citations = array_map('trim', $citations);
 
         return $citations;
     }
diff --git a/tests/classes/citation/CitationListTokenizerFilterTest.php b/tests/classes/citation/CitationListTokenizerFilterTest.php
index c861b83c756..ff75024e345 100644
--- a/tests/classes/citation/CitationListTokenizerFilterTest.php
+++ b/tests/classes/citation/CitationListTokenizerFilterTest.php
@@ -31,10 +31,10 @@ public function testCitationListTokenizerFilter()
         $tokenizer = new CitationListTokenizerFilter();
         $rawCitationList = "\t1. citation1\n\n2 citation2\r\n 3) citation3\n[4]citation4";
         $expectedResult = [
-            'citation1',
-            'citation2',
-            'citation3',
-            'citation4'
+            '1. citation1',
+            '2 citation2',
+            '3) citation3',
+            '[4]citation4'
         ];
         self::assertEquals($expectedResult, $tokenizer->process($rawCitationList));