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JabRef can optionally mark all new entries added or imported to a database with your username.
You can disable or enable this feature by entering Preferences → General, and selecting/deselecting the line 'mark new entries with owner name'. You can also change the name used to mark your entries. The default name used is your user name. Finally, if an entry with a field owner is pasted or imported, the field is updated with your owner name if 'Overwrite' is checked.
The owner name is added in a field called 'owner', which by default is visible in the General fields tab in the entry editor.
JabRef helps you work with your BibTeX databases, but there are still rules to keep in mind when editing your entries, to ensure that your database is treated properly by the BibTeX program.
JabRef stores the encoding of the file and (in case a shared SQL database is used) the ID of the shared database in the header of the bib file.
% Encoding: <encoding>
: States the encoding of a BibTeX file. E.g., % Encoding: UTF-8
To enable auto save, JabRef adds % DBID: <id>
to the header. This helps JabRef identifying the SQL database where the file belongs. E.g., % DBID: 2mvhh73ge3hc5fosdsvuoa808t
.
There is a lot of different fields in BibTeX, and some additional fields that you can set in JabRef.
The following fields are recognized by the default bibliography styles:
bibtexkey A unique string used to refer to the entry in LaTeX documents. Note that when referencing an entry from LaTeX, the key must match case-sensitively with the reference string. Some characters should not be used in bibtexkey as they are not compatible or not recommended:
{ } ( ) , \ " - # ~ ^ : '
address Usually the address of the publisher
or other type of institution. For major publishing houses, you may omit the information entirely or give simply the city. For small publishers, on the other hand, you can help the reader by giving the complete address.
annote An annotation. It is not used by the standard bibliography styles, but may be used by others that produce an annotated bibliography.
author This field should contain the complete author list for your entry. The names are separated by the word and, even if there are more than two authors. Each name can be written in two equivalent forms:
Donald E. Knuth or Knuth, Donald E.
Eddie van Halen or van Halen, Eddie
The second form should be used for authors with more than two names, to differentiate between middle names and last names.
booktitle Title of a book, part of which is being cited. For book entries, use the title
field instead.
chapter A chapter (or section or whatever) number.
crossref The database key of the entry being cross referenced.
edition The edition of a book--for example, ``Second''. This should be an ordinal, and should have the first letter capitalized, as shown here; the standard styles convert to lower case when necessary.
editor This field is analogue to the author field. If there is also an author
field, then the editor
field gives the editor of the book or collection in which the reference appears.
howpublished How something strange has been published. The first word should be capitalized.
institution The sponsoring institution of a technical report.
journal The name of a journal or magazine. The name of a journal can be abbreviated using a "string". To define such string, use the string editor.
key Used for alphabetizing, cross referencing, and creating a label when the ``author'' information is missing. This field should not be confused with the key that appears in the \cite
command and at the beginning of the database entry.
month The month in which the work was published or, for an unpublished work, in which it was written. You should use the standard three-letter abbreviation of the English names (jan, feb, mar, apr, may, jun, jul, aug, sep, oct, nov, dec).
note Any additional information that can help the reader. The first word should be capitalized.
number
The number of a journal, magazine, technical report, or of a work in a series. An issue of a journal or magazine is usually identified by its volume and number; the organization that issues a technical report usually gives it a number; and sometimes books are given numbers in a named series.
organization The organization that sponsors a conference or that publishes a manual.
pages One or more page numbers or range of numbers, such as 42--111
or 7,41,73--97
or 43+
(which indicates page 43 and following pages
). The standard styles convert a single dash (as in 7-33
) to the double dash used in TeX to denote number ranges (as in 7--3
).
publisher The publisher's name.
school The name of the academic institution where a thesis was written.
series The name of a series or set of books. When citing an entire book, the title
field gives its title and an optional series
field gives the name of a series or multi-volume set in which the book is published.
title The title of the work. The capitalization may depend on the bibliography style and on the language used. For words that have to be capitalized (such as a proper noun), enclose the word (or its first letter) in braces.
type The type of a technical report - for example, "Research Note".
volume The volume of a journal or multivolume book.
year The year of publication or, for an unpublished work, the year it was written. Generally it should consist of four numerals, such as 1984
, although the standard styles can handle any year
whose last four nonpunctuation characters are numerals, such as "(about 1984)". This field is required for most entry types.
BibTeX is extremely popular, and many people have used it to store information in non-standard fields. The information in these non-standard fields may be ignored by BibTeX.
Here is a list of some of the more common non-standard fields ("*" = not directly supported by JabRef):
affiliation* The authors affiliation.
abstract An abstract of the work.
doi The Digital Object Identifier, a permanent identifier given to documents.
eid* The Electronic identifier is for electronic journals that also appear in print. This number replaces the page number, and is used to find the article within the printed volume. Sometimes also called citation number.
contents* A table of contents
copyright* Copyright information.
ISBN* The International Standard Book Number.
ISSN* The International Standard Serial Number. Used to identify a journal.
keywords Key words used for searching or possibly for annotation.
language* The language the document is in.
location* A location associated with the entry, such as the city in which a conference took place.
LCCN* The Library of Congress Control Number. I've also seen this as lib-congress
.
mrnumber* The number of Mathematical Reviews.
price* The price of the document.
size* The physical dimensions of a work.
URL The WWW Uniform Resource Locator that points to the item being referenced.
To help in managing your bibliography, and extend the features of BibTeX, JabRef defines some specific fields:
You can create new fields by editing (or creating) entry types.
Generally, you can use LaTeX commands inside of fields containing text. BibTeX will automatically format your reference lists, and those fields that are included in the lists will be (de)capitalized according to your bibliography style. To ensure that certain characters remain capitalized, enclose them in braces, like in the word {B}elgium.
An institution name should be inside {}
brackets.
If the institution name also includes its abbreviation, this abbreviation should be also in {}
brackets.
For instance, {The Attributed Graph Grammar System ({AGG})}
.
Tame the BeaST - The B to X of BibTxX - long manual explaining the workings of BibTeX, the BibTeX format, and the available entry types with required and optional fields.
http://www.math.uiuc.edu/K-theory/aux/K-theory.bib (large file > 6000 publications)
In BibTeX terms, the file links are stored as text in the field file
. From within JabRef, however, they appear as an editable list of links accessed from the entry editor along with other BibTeX fields.
JabRef offers following directory settings:
Options → Preferences → File → External file links → Main file directory
File → Library properties → General file directory.
File → Library properties → User-specific file directory
One of these settings is required. Mostly the "Main file directory" is enough.
JabRef enables setting a directory per database. When sharing a library across multiple persons, each user might have a different directory. Either each user can set his directory in the "Main file directory". In case the group also shares papers and thus there are two directories (the private one and a group-shared one), one can set a directory within the library (the "General file directory"). In case a user has a different location of the shared folder (e.g., different paths on Linux and Windows), he can use the "User-specific file directory". This settings is persisted in the bib
file in a way that it does not overwrite the setting of another user. For this, JabRef uses the username of the currently logged in user (-<loginname>
is used as suffix in the jabref-meta
field). So, both mary
and aileen
can set a different user-specific file directory.
If JabRef saves an attached file and my loginname matches the name stored in the bib
file, it chooses that directory. If no match is found, it uses the "General file directory" of the bib file. If that is not found, it uses the one configured at Options → Preferences → File → External file links ("Main file directory").
In some settings, the bib file is stored in the same directory as the PDF files. Then, one ignore all the above directories and enable "use the BIB file location as primary file directory". In this case, JabRef starts searching for PDF files in the directory of the bib
file. It is also possible to achieve this result by setting .
as "General file directory" in the library properties.
Relative file directories obviously only work in the library properties fo a bib file, e.g. a.bib
→ Library properties → General file directory → papers
. Assume to have two bib files: a.bib
and b.bib
located in different directories: a.bib
located at C:\a.bib
and b.bib
located at X:\b.bib
. When I click on the +
icon in the general Tab of file a.bib
, the popup is opened in the directory C:\papers
(assuming C:\papers
exists).
If you have a file within or below one of your file directories with an extension matching one of the defined external file types, and a name containing a BibTeX entry's BibTeX key, the file can be autolinked by clicking on the Auto button in the entry editor.
The rules for which file names can be autolinked to a BibTeX key can be set up in Preferences → File → External file links → Use regular expression search.
If you want to download a file and link to it from a BibTeX entry, you can do this by clicking the Download button in the entry editor.
A dialog box will appear, prompting you to enter the URL. The file will be downloaded to your main file directory, named based on the entry's BibTeX key, and finally linked from the entry.
It is possible to have greater flexibility in the naming scheme by using regular expression for the search. In most cases it should not be necessary though to adapt the given default.
If you open the external preferences (Options → Preferences → File) you will find an option called "Use regular expression search". Checking this option will allow you to enter your own regular expression for search in the PDF directories.
The following syntax is understood:
*
- Search in all immediate all subdirectories excluding the current and any deeper subdirectories.
**
- Search in all subdirectories recursively AND the current directory.
.
and ..
- The current directory and the parent directory.
[title]
- All expressions in square brackets are replace by the corresponding field in the current entry
[extension]
- Is replaced by the file-extension of the field you are using.
All other text is interpreted as a regular expression. But caution: You need to escape backslashes by putting two backslashes after each other to not confuse them with the path-separator.
The default for searches is **/.*[bibtexkey].*\\.[extension]
. As you can see this will search in all subdirectories of the extension-based directory (for instance in the PDF directory) for any file that has the correct extension and contains the BibTeX-key somewhere.
To access any of an entry's links, click on the icon with the right mouse button (or Ctrl + Click on Mac OS X) to bring up a menu showing all links.
In general, there is no need to change the settings of external file types. So, this setting is for advanced users.
For each file link, a file type must be chosen, to determine what icon should be used and what application should be called to open the file. The list of file types can be viewed and edited by choosing Options → Manage external file types, or by clicking the Manage external file types button in the External programs tab of the Preferences dialog.
A file type is specified by its name, a graphical icon, a file extension and an application to view the files. On Windows, the name of the application can be omitted in order to use Window's default viewer instead.
Since: 3.5
JabRef supports following fields to jump to other entries.
Following fields are supported:
cites
- comma separated list of BibTeX keys which are cited by this entry
crossref
- single entry which is cross referenced.
To use the crossref
field, navigate to the general tab and insert the Crossref at the top.
To use cites
and related
, follow these steps:
Navigate to BibTeX source
Insert related = {bibtexkey},
Close the entry editor
Open the entry editor
Navigate to "Other fields"
There, you now see "related" with the possibilities to (i) navigate to the entry, (ii) add new related entries, (iii) remove related entries.
Please note that BibLaTeX treats crossref differently than BibTeX.
citedBy
- this is the opposite of cites
. Use cites
instead.
relations
- this would introduce a complicated field similar to our save actions. A simple key/value is enough
references
- stores all references in plain text (PRVV plugin). Thus, we do not use it.
JabRef can optionally set a field to contain the date an entry was added to the database.
You can disable or enable this feature by entering Options → Preferences → General, and selecting/deselecting the line 'Mark new entries with addition date'.
If an entry with a timestamp is pasted or imported, the field is updated with the current date if 'Overwrite' is checked. The value of the timestamp field will be updated upon changes in the entry if 'Update timestamp on modification' is checked.
You can manually alter the value by typing in the date and time of your choice. Also, by clicking on the calendar icon located at the right end of the field, you can select the date you want in a calendar.
The formatting of the time stamp is determined by a string containing designator words that indicate the position of the various parts of the date.
These are some of the available designator letters (examples are given in parentheses for Wednesday 14th of September 2005 at 5.45 PM):
yy: year (05)
yyyy: year (2005)
MM: month (09)
dd: day in month (14)
HH: hour in day (17)
mm: minute in hour (45)
These designators can be combined along with punctuation and whitespace. A couple of examples:
yyyy.MM.dd gives 2005.09.14
yy.MM.dd gives 05.09.14
yyyy.MM.dd HH:mm gives 2005.09.14 17:45
JabRef lets you link up your entries with files of any type stored on your system. Thereby, it uses the field file
, which contains a list of linked files. Each entry can have an arbitrary number of file links, and each linked file can be opened quickly from JabRef. The fields url
and doi
are used as links to documents on the web in the form of an URL or a DOI identifier respectively. See for an explanation.
If the "file" field is included in , you can edit the list of external links for an entry in the . The editor includes buttons for inserting, editing and removing links, as well as buttons for reordering the list of links.
.
JabRef uses all directories set at to search for the files. JabRef starts in the user-specific file directory, then the general file directory and finally the main file directory to handle files.
There are several ways to open an external file or web page. In the entry table, you can click on the PDF icon to open the PDF. In case there are multiple PDFs linked, always the first one is opened. You can also right click on the line of the entry in the entry table and select "Open file". There is also a keyboard shorcut for this: In the default setting, this is F4, but .
related
- comma separated list of BibTeX keys which are in some kind related to this entry. The type of all relations can be specified by a single relatedtype
(see ). Note: Biblatex prints this information if related
is active at the biblatex package.
If you use crossref
, JabRef will move these entries first in the bibliography as otherwise bibtex cannot use the information of the cross-referenced fields. See also .
See for the developer's discussion on the fields.
By default, the date is added in a field called 'timestamp', which is visible in the General fields tab in the . You can alter the name of this field. The date format can also be customized (see below).
The timestamp field can be edited in the General fields tab of the . If you do not see these fields, enable them at or reset your preferences.
This information is outdated. Please help to improve it.
This feature allows you to store a selection of often-used words or phrases that you use often in your database. By default it is enabled for the fields Journal, Author, Keywords and Publisher, but you can also add selectors to other fields, in the upper part of the Manage dialog (menu Options -→ Manage content selectors).
The word selection is database-specific, and is saved along with your references in the .bib file.
To add a new word in the entry editor, you can simply click into the text box for the field for which you configured the selectors. A drop down menu will appear and you can select the keyword of your choice. This mechanism is based on the autocompletion functionality in JabRef. Therefore, you need to have autocompletion enabled in your preferences.
This information is outdated. Please help to improve it.
Special fields offer the functionality
rate read papers
mark papers as relevant for the work
mark BibTeX entries as quality assured, and
prioritize unread papers.
The main difference from the marked entry is that the rated entry is not floating by default and only highlight the number column. Thus, an entry may be both marked and rated.
Each special field may be turned on and off in the settings.
The aim is to add a functionality to set a range of “positive” ratings. JabRef offers a rank from one to five stars to rate papers.
An entry may be marked as relevant.
An entry may be marked as quality assured. The intention is to mark BibTeX entries, where a thorough checking of the field contents has been done.
One may prioritize entries from prio3 (low) to prio1 (high). The main intention is to prioritize unread papers.
Internally, each special field is stored in a separate BibTeX field. If “Write values of special fields as separate fields to BibTeX” is active, these fields are also written when the database is saved. JabRef also offers synchronizing the fields with keywords. This is enabled by the setting “Synchronize with keywords”. If this setting is active, then each change in a special field is reflected in the keyword field. Vice versa, each change in a keyword also leads to a change in the special field. Additionally, when loading a the database or pasting a new entry, the keywords are used to set the special field values.
Since: 5.0
JabRef can automatically toggle journal names between abbreviated and unabbreviated form, as long as the names are contained in one of your journal lists.
This feature can be configured under Options → Manage journal abbreviations.
JabRef includes a fairly extensive build-in list of journal abbreviations. This list is a merge of all lists available at abbrv.jabref.org. However, this might still be be incomplete (or outdated) for the purposes of some users. Thus, JabRef allows to add abbreviations in the form of a personal list or external lists.
Journal name conversion can be accessed either from within the entry editor, or from the Tools menu. In the entry editor you will find a button labeled Toggle abbreviation by the journal field. Clicking this button will cause the current journal name to be switched to the next of four modes:
Full name, e.g. "Aquacultural Engineering"
Default abbreviation, e.g. "Aquacult. Eng."
Medline abbreviation, e.g. "Aquacult Eng"
Shortest unique abbreviation, e.g. "AQEND6"
If the current journal name is not found in your journal lists, the field will not be modified.
To convert the journal names of many entries in bulk, you can select any number of entries, and choose Tools → Abbreviate journal names (DEFAULT), Tools → Abbreviate journal names (MEDLINE), Tools → Abbreviate journal names → SHORTEST UNIQUE, or Tools → Unabbreviate journal names. These three actions will abbreviate and unabbreviate the journal names of all selected entries for which the journal name could be found in your journal lists.
In addition to the build-in journal list, you can have a personal list and external lists.
Any entry in your personal journal list will override an entry with the same full journal name in one of the external lists. Similarly, the external lists are given precedence in the order they are listed.
Your personal journal list is managed on top of the Manage journal abbreviations window. To start building your personal journal abbreviations list, choose Add new list, and enter a filename. If you already have a file that you want to use as a starting point, use the Open existing list button. The table will update to show the contents of the list you have selected.
The table and the tool buttons in the upper right allow you to add, remove and edit journal entries. For each entry you must provide the full journal name, and the default abbreviation (e.g. "Aquacultural Engineering" and "Aquacult. Eng."). The last field, which contains the shortest unique abbreviation, is optional. Therefore, you can actually safely omit it. To edit an entry, double-click its row in the table.
Once you click Save changes, if you have selected a file, and the table contains at least one entry, the table contents will be stored to the selected file, and JabRef's list of journals will be updated.
You can link to a number of external lists. These links can be set up on top of the Manage journal abbreviations window. External lists are similar to the personal list. The Open existing list button allows you to select an existing file on your computer.
External lists can be found at JabRef's repository abbreviation lists. These data files are in CSV format (using semicolons as separators):
The two last fields are optional, and you can omit them. JabRef supports the third field, which contains the shortest unique abbreviation. The last field is not currently used; its intention is gives frequency (e.g., M
for monthly). For instance:
We want to expand both the build-in list and the selection of smaller lists, so if you have set up a representative list for your own subject area, we would appreciate it if you share your list via GitHub or by dropping a note on our forum.
For linking attached files, see File links in JabRef.
JabRef lets you link documents on the web in the form of an URL or a DOI identifier.
JabRef has to know which external viewers to use for web pages. These are by default set to values that probably make sense for your operating system, so there's a fair chance you don't have to change these values.
To change the external viewer settings, go to Options → Preferences → External programs.
There are several ways to open an external web page. In the entry editor, click on the icon "open" right of the text field to open the respective DOI or URL.
In the entry table you can select an entry and use the menu choice, keyboard shortcut or the right-click menu to open the file or web page. Finally, you can click on a URL or DOI icon.
By default the entry table will contain a singly column containing an indicator whether there is a DOI or a URL linked. You can disable any of these in Options → Preferences → Entry table columns.
This feature is available through Edit → Set/clear/rename fields.
and then in some entry for example
or
In the JabRef field editor, the author has to be inserted as #kopp# #et# #kubovy#
or #kopp# and #kubovy#
.
Strings are rendered specially in the entry editor. This is especially important in the case of months. For instance, take the following BibTeX entry:
In JabRef, the entry editor then displays #may#
. In case the entry editor just displays may
, this is written as follows:
In other words: The character #
indicates something special in the entry editor.
JabRef enhances the concept of Strings to add a type to those @String
s. The issue is how to preserve such type of a string in a BibTeX file. JabRef adds the type though prefixes:
@String { aKopp = "Kopp, Oliver" }
is a @String
with the type author.
@String { iMIT = "{Massachusetts Institute of Technology ({MIT})}" }
is a @String
with the type of institution.
@String { anct = "Anecdote" }
is a @String
of type other.
@String { lTOSCA = "Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications" }
is a @String
of type other.
Then @String
s of type author should be used for author and editors fields only. @String
s of type institution should be used for institution and organization fields only. @String
s of type publisher should be used only for publisher fields. And finally @String
s of type other can be used anywhere.
It can also happen that you will have the same institution for more types:
@String { aMIT = "{Massachusetts Institute of Technology ({MIT})}" }
if the institution will appear as author or editor
@String { iMIT = "{Massachusetts Institute of Technology ({MIT})}" }
if the institution will appear as institution or organization
@String { pMIT = "{Massachusetts Institute of Technology ({MIT}) press}" }
if the institution will appear as publisher.
Even if the last example may appear contradicting the intention was to remove duplicity and unify the names of persons and institutions.
BibTeX supports storing constant strings using @String {key = value}
. JabRef supports managing them using BibTeX → Edit strings, which opens the . These values can be used in fields. For example, you can have:
See for a MWE for string constants.