Online BibTex References

Question

What are the online tools available for managing conference/journal papers, articles and books? I am looking for features like export to IEEE reference style, BibTex style, etc;

Answer 1

Mendeley is my absolute favorite. It features a great web app as well as a useful desktop application. A free account gives you 500 MB of document storage and enables you to sort entries by tags and collections. Articles can be added manually through the website or desktop application, by uploading a document to the website or desktop app, or by using the Web Importer bookmarklet in your browser.

The Mendeley website adds a little social element to the mix. You can add contacts, share documents, and send updates in a Twitter-like manner. Since I have no friends on there, I've never tried this out. :)

Finally, a .bib file can be generated dynamically in a folder you set. Simply add \bibliographystyle{plain} to your preamble, \bibliography{../library} to the last page, and \cite{Joos1987} after each cited text. Of course, you must replace Joos1987 with the correct citation ID (usually LastnameYear) and ../library with the location of the .bib file minus the extension. I store each of my LaTeX documents in their own subfolder under a Tex folder and set Mendeley to save the bibliography in Tex/library.bib. This way every paper or book I own is easily accessible by any of my documents.

Answer 2

Zotero is my personal recommendation if you use Firefox. It's not strictly a webapp, but a Firefox-only plugin that lets you manage your library in a separate browser pane. It syncs your library with a central server, so you can view it online in the browser too.

It can export your library in several formats, of which BibTeX is one. One disadvantage is that you can't define your own format for your citation keys, they all come out as authorlastname_titlefirstword_year.

You can define collections, say the citations for one manuscript, and export a ready-made bibliography to the clipboard in a multitude of styles, ready to be pasted into a word processor. You can also install plugins for new styles.

Answer 3

Ptomato says:

One disadvantage is that you can't define your own format for your citation keys.

This is correct. However, you can open the BibTex file generated in Zotero using JabRef, and automatically generate citation keys for each one of the entries.