$re = '/cite:[^@][A-Za-z0-9_-]+|\[\[cite:[^@][A-Za-z0-9_-]+\]\]/m';
$str = 'I want to recognize these as org-ref links
[[cite:schuett-2018-schnet]]
cite:schuett-2018-schnet
but not
[cite:@schuett-2018-schnet]
';
preg_match_all($re, $str, $matches, PREG_SET_ORDER, 0);
// Print the entire match result
var_dump($matches);
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php