General FAQs
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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: We are collecting all publications we hear about at .
A: Yes. In Options → Preferences → General set "Default Encoding" to UTF8 and select an alternative user interface language in "Language" if required.
A: 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.
A: To add this translator field to all entry types, you can use Options → Set up general fields and add a translator field under one of JabRef's general field tabs. To add this translator field to a specific entry type, edit the specific entry type(s) (Options → Customize entry types) and add a translator field under required fields or optional fields, as you like.
A: Open Options → 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: You need to override the default file directory for this specific library. In File → Library properties you can override the Default file directory setting. There, you can either enter the path in General 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.
A: In File → Library properties you can choose a library specific directory in the field “General 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 (*.csv)”.
A: Select the entries. Right click. Choose “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.
A: In Options → Manage external file types you can add arbitrary types.
A: JabRef offers a portable version of the application as a compressed file (.zip or .tar.gz) without an installer. Be sure to activate "Load and Save preferences from/to jabref.xml on start-up (memory stick mode)" in Options → Preferences → General.
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 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: Upon compilation, LaTeX generates a file with the extension ".aux". This files 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. Select the reference library (among the opened ones) and specify the AUX file.
A: In File → 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.
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: JabRef does no longer support plugins (since version 3.0). Automatic file renaming is now part of the Quality → Cleanup entries feature. There you can rename attached files based on the BibTeX key. You can change the format (pattern) under Options → Preferences → Import, by altering the pattern under "Default PDF file link action".
In case you want to development version open when double clicking a .bib file, install the development version and uncompress the portable version of the latest release to a folder.
A: Enter XYZ in the search field located at the upper left-hand corner of the preference window.
A: In Options → Preferences → Advanced → “Remote operation” put a checkmark to “Listen for remote operation on port”. This option allows new instances of JabRef to detect the instance already running, and pass files to that instead of opening a new window. (Default option since ).
A: There are several reasons why JabRef cannot find your identifier online. (E.g. one reason could be that 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 web search instead.
A: Yes, you can use the parameter --importToOpen bibfile of the .
A: Take a look at “Bibliographies and citations” at the . For German readers, there is the .
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 much crawls JabRef is being blocked. To solve this issue, see the section Traffic limitations in the .
A: In JabRef 3.0 plugin support was removed, because the development team cannot keep up plugin support any more. Nevertheless, plugins can be integrated in JabRef. See for the current status and discussion. Please contact the author of the respective plugin and ask him to port his plugin into JabRef's code.
A: Download the portable version (file JabRef-X.Y.portable_windows.zip, JabRef-X.Y.portable_macos.tar.gz, or JabRef-X.Y.portable_linux.tar.gz) from , uncompress it, and run the executable. We recomment a folder such as ~/home/JabRef or c:\portable-apps\JabRef to ensure that the portable version does not conflict with the latest release version installed from .