Frequently Asked Questions
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A: You are not obliged to cite JabRef, but we would greatly appreciate it if you do.
A: Yes it is. JabRef is distributed under the MIT License, which .
A: You can try resetting the settings. Depending on your operating system, you may need to pass the command line arguments -d all -n to JabRef.
(E.g. in Windows this means jabref-X.Y.exe -d all -n, where X.Y means the version number of JabRef. If this does not help, run regedit and delete the folder HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Prefs\net\sf\jabref. Be careful with regedit, as you can easily corrupt the basic Windows configuration.)
A: Don't panic. No data should be damaged in your bib library. Since version 5.0 the columns in the main entry table are stored differently internally. You can reset the preferences by command line. See above.
A: Check your configuration. Disable some or all of following preferences:
disable fulltext index (File → Preferences → Linked files → Fulltext Index → ...)
disable time stamps (File → Preferences → General → Time Stamp → ...)
disable field formatters (Library → Library Properties → Saving → Save actions → ...)
disable autosave (File → Preferences → File → Saving → ...)
disable count of items in group (File → Preferences → Groups → ...)
Any preference that has the potential to affect all your entries at once is worth inspecting.
A: Yes. In File → Preferences → General, set "Default Encoding" to UTF8 and select an alternative user interface language in "Language" if required.
A: In File → Preference → Single Instance, ensure that "Enforce single JabRef Instance (and allow remote operations) using port [6050]" is checked. Note that 6050 is the default port and can be changed if desired.
A: Open File → Preferences. In the “File” panel, you will find an option called “Do not wrap the following fields when saving”. This option contains a semicolon-separated list of field names. Any field you add to this list will always be stored without introduction of line breaks.
A: In Library → Library properties you can choose a library-specific directory in the field “Library-specific file directory”. If you want to set a directory only for you (so that other users should use the default directory), use the field “User-specific file directory”.
A: Use File → Export. As “Filter” choose “OpenOffice/LibreOffice CSV”.
A: Use curly braces to tell BibTeX to keep your author field as-is: {European Commission}. In BibLaTeX, you can use label = {EC} to have EC05 as a label for a publication of the European Commission in the year 2005.
A: Your JabRef library is already a file in Bib(La)TeX format. To export a specific subset of your library, select the entries to be exported and then choose File → Export → Save selected as plain BibTeX....
A: Paste the Bib(la)Tex code of a reference into the table of entries, and JabRef will create the new corresponding entry.
A: JabRef can fetch the DOI for you: select the entries and go to Lookup → Search document identifier online → DOI.
A: JabRef can fetch the PDFs for you: select the entries and to Lookup → Search full text documents online.
A: Upon compilation, LaTeX generates a file with the extension ".aux". This file contains the keys of the cited references (among other things). Using this AUX file, JabRef can extract the relevant entries. Choose the menu Tools → New sublibrary based on AUX file... , then select the AUX file.
A: You have to start vim with the option --servername (such as vim --servername MyVimServer). If you get the Unknown option argument message, it means your version of vim does not include the clientserver feature (you can check with vim --version). In such a case, you have to install another version of vim.
A: Enter XYZ in the search field located at the upper left-hand corner of the preference window.
A: JabRef opens the pdf document with the application Gnome has set by default: Evince. If you want JabRef to open another application (Okular or other), in your file explorer, right-click on whatever pdf file > properties > Open With > choose your application > Set as default at the bottom right corner. From now on, both when you double-click a pdf file in your file explorer or when you ask JabRef to open it via its document viewer, your chosen application will be used.
A: JabRef automatically recognizes a change in the bib file on disk and notifies the user of it. This is cool for network drives.
A: JabRef uses https to connect to external catalogs to fetch bibliographic data. The concrete port used depends on the external service. Mostly, the standard port 443 is used. When connecting to a SQL database, the standard port for PostgreSQL and MySQL is used. JabRef offers a local interface used by the browser plugin. For that, JabRef uses a proprietary, text-based protocol offered on the configurable port 6050.
Sort the maintable columns from A-Z (low to highest), not from Z-A. See issue .
We collect performance related issues .
A: We are collecting all publications we hear about at .
A: Paste the DOI in the table of entries, and JabRef will create the corresponding entry. Additionally, in Library → New entry you can select the type of the identifier in the field "ID type" and enter the identifier in "ID". A click on "Generate" should create the correct entry. If this does not work, try a web search. For more details, see .
A: There are several reasons why JabRef cannot find your identifier online. For example, your DOI is not listed in the if you are using the CrossRef fetcher. Another reason could be that the search result for your DOI on returns invalid BibTeX which is unable to be read by JabRef. Try a instead.
A: To add this translator field to all entry types, you can use File → Preferences → Custom editor tabs and add a translator field under one of JabRef's general field tabs (see s). To add this translator field to a specific entry type, edit the specific entry type(s) (File → Customize entry types) and add a translator field under required fields or optional fields, as you like (see ).
A: Yes, you can use the parameter --importToOpen bibfile of the .
A: You need to override the default file directory for this specific library. In Library → Library properties you can override the Default file directory setting. There, you can either enter the path in Library-specific file directory (for it to be valid for all users of the file) or in User-specific file directory (for it to be valid for you only). If you simply enter “.” (a dot, without the quotes), the file directory will be the same as the .bib file directory. To place your files in a subdirectory called subdir, you can enter “./subdir” (without the quotes). Files will automatically be linked with relative paths if the files are placed in the default file directory or in a directory below it. More details on the .
A: Select the entries and go to Library → Manage keywords. There you can manage keywords appearing in all selected entries or in any selected entry. New keywords are added to all selected entries. More details about .
In File → Preferences, tab External programs, button "Manage external file types", you can add arbitrary types. See the .
A: Take a look at “Bibliographies and citations” at the . For German readers, there is the .
A: Drag & drop a PDF onto the table of entries (between two existing entries). JabRef will analyze the PDF and create a new entry. More details about
A: Use : with one click, JabRef browser extension identifies and extracts bibliographic information on websites and sends them to JabRef.
A: In Library → Library properties, you will find a section named "Save actions". After enabling this feature, you can choose which actions should be performed for each field upon saving. That should help you keep your library tidy. More details about , , and .
A: Google scholar is blocking "automated" crawls which generate too much traffic in a short time. JabRef already uses a two-step approach (with the prefetched list before crawling the actual BibTeX data) to circumvent this. However, after too many crawls JabRef is being blocked. To solve this issue, see the section in the Google Scholar database.
A: In JabRef 3.0 plugin support was removed because the development team cannot keep up plugin support anymore. Nevertheless, plugins can be integrated in JabRef. See for the current status and discussion. Please contact the author of the respective plugin and ask them to port their plugin into JabRef's code.
A: This error message has been observed on systems that use . System calls to inotify_init and inotify_add_watch set errno to EMFILE when inotify has reached its limit. The most common reason is that inotify is running too many instances. To solve this problem, contact your system administrator and request that they increase the limits defined in /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_* files.
If you use version control, a few advices are given for a smoother .
In addition, we have .
A: You can either choose to or to .
A: After consulting and checking whether your question has been please head over to the .
A: See .