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BibTeX ⇄ RIS converter

Paste BibTeX entries or RIS records and convert in either direction — the format is auto-detected. Copy the result or download a ready-to-import .ris/.bib file. Free, no signup.

Bring my whole library overImport your .bib or .ris file once and Kahubi reads, searches and cites every paper in it. Free account.

When to use this

BibTeX and RIS are the two file formats your references travel in. You need a converter at every toolchain boundary: a co-author writes in Word with EndNote (RIS world) while you write in LaTeX (BibTeX world); a journal's export button only offers one of the formats; you are migrating a library between Zotero, Mendeley or RefWorks and a .bib-based workflow; or a systematic-review screening tool exports RIS that your typesetting pipeline cannot read. This converter parses each entry properly (it is the same import engine Kahubi's library uses, built on citation-js) rather than doing line-by-line text substitution, so author names, entry types and DOIs map to the correct fields in the other format.

What converts cleanly

Standard entry types: articles, books, chapters, conference papers, theses, reports, preprints, web pages.
Core fields: title, authors (with name order preserved), year, journal/venue, DOI, URL, abstract.
Multiple entries at once — paste a whole .bib or .ris file.
Both "Last, First" and "First Last" author spellings.

Common mistakes

Pasting a formatted bibliography (plain text citations) — the converter needs structured BibTeX or RIS, not APA-formatted text.
Forgetting that LaTeX markup inside BibTeX fields ({\"u}, math mode) has no RIS equivalent and is simplified.
Importing the converted file without spot-checking entry types — "misc" entries in particular deserve a look.

Frequently asked questions

When do I need RIS, and when BibTeX?

RIS is the lingua franca of reference managers: EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley, RefWorks and most journal "export citation" buttons read and write it. BibTeX (.bib) is the native format of the LaTeX/BibTeX/biblatex toolchain and of tools like Overleaf and JabRef. Moving a library from a reference manager into a LaTeX project means RIS (or a direct export) → BibTeX; sharing a .bib file with an EndNote user means BibTeX → RIS.

Will all fields survive the conversion?

The common scholarly fields do: type, title, authors, year, journal/venue, DOI, URL and abstract. The two formats are not perfectly aligned, though — BibTeX-specific fields (custom keys, notes, LaTeX markup) and rarely used RIS tags have no exact counterpart and may be simplified. Always spot-check a couple of entries after converting.

Is my reference list stored anywhere?

No. The text is parsed in memory to perform the conversion and the result is returned to your browser — nothing is saved, logged into a database, or used for anything else.

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