Convert RIS references to BibTeX
The RIS format is the export format used by reference managers such as
EndNote, Zotero and Mendeley, and by databases like PubMed and Scopus. BibTeX
is the bibliography format LaTeX uses. This tool reads RIS records and produces
ready-to-paste .bib entries so you can move a literature library into a LaTeX
document without retyping anything.
How it works
RIS is a line-based format. Each line is a two-letter tag, two spaces, a dash, a
space, then the value — for example TI - The title. A record starts at a TY
line (the reference type) and ends at an ER - line. The parser splits the input
on those boundaries, collects each tag’s value (authors AU/A1 accumulate into a
list), then maps tags onto BibTeX fields: TI→title, PY/Y1→year, JO/JF/T2→journal,
VL→volume, IS→number, DO→doi, and SP/EP→pages joined with --.
The BibTeX entry type comes from TY: JOUR→@article, BOOK→@book,
CONF→@inproceedings, THES→@phdthesis, everything else→@misc. The cite key
is the first author’s surname plus the year (Smith2021); duplicate keys get a
trailing letter so every key is unique.
Example
A minimal journal record like this:
TY - JOUR
AU - Smith, Jane
TI - On parsing references
JO - Journal of Tools
PY - 2021
VL - 12
SP - 3
EP - 17
ER -becomes:
@article{Smith2021,
author = {Smith, Jane},
title = {On parsing references},
journal = {Journal of Tools},
year = {2021},
volume = {12},
pages = {3--17}
}