Each library can have specific properties that can be modified through Library→ Library properties. These specific properties override the generic properties defined in Options → Preferences.

The library-specific properties are stored in the database itself. This way, when moving the database to another computer, these properties are preserved. In most of cases, these are stored in the bib-file database using text blocks starting with @Comment{jabref-meta:.

The library properties window consists of four tabs:

• General

• Saving

• String constants

• Citation key patterns

Tab "General"

General

Library encoding

This setting determines which character encoding JabRef will use when writing this library to disk. Changing this setting will override the setting made in Preferences dialog for this database. JabRef specifies the encoding near the top of the bib file, in order to be able to use the correct encoding next time you open the file. The drop-down menu allows to select one encoding.

Library mode

You can select if your library follows the BibTeX or the biblatex format.

Override default file directories

In your library, files (PDF, etc.) can be linked to an entry. The list of these files are stored in the file field of the entry. The location of these files has to be specified.

For your library, you can define a General file directory and a User-specific file directory. These settings override the main file directory defined in the Preferences dialog.

The General file directory is a common path for all the users of a shared database. The User-specific file directory allows each user to have its own file directory for the database. If defined, it overrides the General file directory.

JabRef stores the name of the current system alongside the User-specific file directory. This assumes that each user of the library has a different system name. For example, when using the computer laptop, the entry in the bib file is @Comment{jabref-meta: fileDirectory-jabref-laptop:\somedir;}

Relative directories can be specified. This means that the location of the files will be interpreted relative to the location of the bib file. Simply setting a directory to "." (without quotes) means that the files should reside in the same directory as the bib file.

Preamble

The preamble defines some LaTeX commands that will be included in the bibliography once processed by BibTeX.

Tab "Saving"

Library protection

While you edit a shared library, another user may be editing it too. By default, saving the library will overwrite changes done by others (although a warning message about the changes will be displayed).​

To avoid discarding changes involuntarily, and hence to allow a smooth collaborative work, you can choose to refuse to save the library before external changes have been reviewed. This setting lets you enforce reviewing of external changes before the library can be saved: users will only be able to save the library after any external changes have been reviewed and either merged or rejected.

Save sort order

When saving the library, the order of the entries will be preserved if Save entries in their original order is selected. Alternatively, by selecting Save entries ordered as specified, you can choose to sort the entries using three criteria. For each criterion, you can type-in the field to be used and select the order.

Save actions

Field formatting can be tidied up when saving the library. That ensures your entries to have consistent formatting. If you check Enable save actions, the list of actions can be configured.

For more information see Save Actions.

Tab "String constants"

The string constants of the library.

Tab "Citation key patterns"

The citation key patterns to be used with this library.

This feature is available through File → Preferences → Keyboard shortcuts.

You can reset the keyboard shortcuts to default by pressing the "Default" button. This is especially useful when upgrading from a JabRef version before 3.8.2.

You can add an arbitrary number of tabs to the entry editor. These will be present for all entry types. To customize these tabs, go to Options → Preferences → Custom editor tabs.

You specify one tab on each line. The line should start with the name of the tab, followed by a colon (:), and the fields it should contain, separated by semicolons (;).

For example:

will give one tab named "General" containing the fields url, keywords, doi and pdf, and another tab named "Abstract" containing the fields abstract and annote.

It does not matter how you capitalise your field names. In the entry editor's tabs, normally fields' first letter is capitalised, i.e. abstract is represented as Abstract, KEYwords would be represented as Keywords (DOI, ISBN, URL are exceptions in that all letters are capitalised). In the bibtex code, all field names use lower case: KEYwords is keywords in the entry's bibtex code.

The pattern used in the auto generation of citation labels can be set for each of the standard entry types in File → Preferences, tab Citation key generator. A detailed description can be found in the default citation key pattern section.

Citation key patterns

The key pattern can contain any text you wish, in addition to field markers that indicate that a specific field of the entry should be inserted at that position of the key. A field marker generally consists of the field name (in upper case letters) enclosed in square braces, e.g., [TITLE]. If the field is undefined in an entry at the time of key generation, no text will be inserted by the field marker. A field enclosed in square braces can be further changed by appending one or more of the available modifiers separated by :, e.g., [TITLE:abbr].

For an entry with the title An awesome paper on JabRef, the citation key pattern demo[TITLE:abbr] will provide the key demoAapoJ.

Special field markers

Several special field markers are offered, which extract only a specific part of a field. Feel free to suggest new special field markers.

Author-related field markers

• [auth]: The last name of the first author

• [authFirstFull]: Get the von part and last name of the first author

• [authForeIni]: The forename initial of the first author

• [auth.etal]: The last name of the first author, and the last name of the second author if there are two authors or .etal if there are more than two.

• [authEtAl]: The last name of the first author, and the last name of the second author if there are two authors or EtAl if there are more than two. This is similar to auth.etal. The difference is that the authors are not separated by . and in case of more than 2 authors EtAl instead of .etal is appended.

• [auth.auth.ea]: The last name of the first two authors, separated by .. If there are more than two authors, adds .ea.

• [authors]: The last name of all authors.

• [authorsN]: The last name of up to N authors. If there are more authors, EtAl is appended

• [authIniN]: The beginning of each author's last name, using at most N characters in total.

• [authN]: The first N characters of the first author's last name.

• [authN_M]: The first N characters of the Mth author's last name.

• [authorIni]: The first 5 characters of the first author's last name, and the last name initial of the remaining authors.

• [authshort]: The last name if one author is given; the first character of up to three authors' last names if more than one author is given. A plus character is added, if there are more than three authors

• [authorsAlpha]: Corresponds to the BibTeX style “alpha”,

  • One author: The first three letters of the last name

  • Two to four authors: The first letter of the last name of each author

  • More than four authors: The first letter of the first three authors' last name. A + is added at the end if it is not in the list of unwanted characters.

• [authorLast]: The last name of the last author.

• [authorLastForeIni]: The forename initial of the last author.

Note: If there is no author (as in the case of an edited book), then all of the above [auth...] markers will use the editor(s) (if any) as a fallback. Thus, the editor(s) of a book with no author will be treated as the author(s) for label-generation purposes. If you do not want this behavior, i.e. you require a marker which expands to nothing if there is no author, use pureauth instead of auth in the above codes. For example, [pureauth], or [pureauthors3].

The name of institutions and companies often contain spaces and words that have a specific meaning in the author field, e.g., and. The full name should be enclosed in braces ({}) to prevent the name from being miss-parsed for these cases. Names enclosed in braces are often abbreviated while generating citation keys to avoid creating excessively long keys. For example, when using [authors], author = {European Union Aviation Safety Agency} is abbreviated to Agency, whereas author = {{European Union Aviation Safety Agency}} is abbreviated to EUASA.

Editor-related field markers

• [edtr]: The last name of the first editor

• [edtrIniN]: The beginning of each editor's last name, using at most N characters

• [editors]: The last name of all editors

• [editorLast]: The last name of the last editor

• [editorIni]: The first 5 characters of the first editor's last name, and the last name initials of the remaining editors

• [edtrN]: The first N characters of the first editor's last name

• [edtrN_M]: The first N characters of the Mth editor's last name

• [edtr.edtr.ea]: The last name of the first two editors, separated by .. If there are more than two editors, adds .ea

• [edtrshort]: The last name if one editor is given; the first character of up to three editors' last names if more than one editor is given. A plus character is added, if there are more than three editors

• [edtrForeIni]: The forename initial of the first editor

• [editorLastForeIni]: The forename initial of the last editor

Title-related field markers

• [shorttitle]: The first 3 words of the title, ignoring any function words (see below). For example, An awesome paper on JabRef becomes AwesomePaperJabref

• [shorttitleINI]: The first 3 words of the title, abbreviated.

• [veryshorttitle]: The first word of the title, ignoring any function words (see below). For example, An awesome paper on JabRef becomes Awesome

• [camel]: Capitalize and concatenate all the words of the title. For example, An awesome paper on JabRef becomes AnAwesomePaperOnJabref

• [camelN]: Capitalize and concatenate no more than the first N words of the title. For example, An awesome paper on JabRef plus four more words becomes:

  • AnAwesomePaperOnJabref with [camel5], and

  • AnAwesome with [camel2].

• [title]: Capitalize all the significant words of the title, and concatenate them. For example, An awesome paper on JabRef becomes AnAwesomePaperonJabref

• [fulltitle]: The title with unchanged capitalization.

JabRef considers the following words to be function words: "a", "about", "above", "across", "against", "along", "among", "an", "and", "around", "at", "before", "behind", "below", "beneath", "beside", "between", "beyond", "but", "by", "down", "during", "except", "for", "for", "from", "in", "inside", "into", "like", "near", "nor", "of", "off", "on", "onto", "or", "since", "so", "the", "through", "to", "toward", "under", "until", "up", "upon", "with", "within", "without", "yet".

Other field markers

• [entrytype]: The type of the entry, e.g., Article, InProceedings, etc

• [firstpage]: The number of the first page of the publication (Caution: this will return the lowest number found in the pages field, i.e. for 7,41,73--97 it will return 7.)

• [pageprefix]: The non-digit prefix of pages (like L for L7) or "" if no non-digit prefix exists (like "" for 7,41,73--97)

• [keywordN]: Keyword number N from the “keywords” field, assuming keywords are separated by commas or semicolons

• [keywordsN]: Up to N keywords from the "keywords" field

• [lastpage]: The number of the last page of the publication (See the remark on firstpage)

• [shortyear]: The last 2 digits of the publication year

Bibentry fields

In addition to the special field markers, most BibTeX, biblatex, and JabRef field names can be accessed by their capitalized name directly. If you regularly use a field name not on this list, you are encouraged to add it.

• [AUTHOR]: Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage becomes AdaLovelaceandCharlesBabbage

• [DATE]: 2020-09-25

• [DAY]: 02 becomes 2

• [GROUPS]: The groups or subgroups in JabRef. Subgroup AppleTrees and group Trees becomes AppleTreesTrees

• [MONTH]: 03 becomes March

• [YEAR]: 2020

Note: You can use any field present in the entry. However, multi-line fields like comment or abstract can produce unexpected results, and their use is discouraged. The customize entry types section contains more information about fields and their customization.

Modifiers

A field name (or one of the above pseudo-field names) may optionally be followed by one or more modifiers.

Generally, modifiers are applied in the order they are specified. In the following, we present a list of the most common modifiers alongside a short explanation:

• :abbr: Abbreviates the text produced by the field name or special field marker. Only the first character and subsequent characters following white space will be included. For example:

  • [journal:abbr] would from the journal name Journal of Fish Biology produce JoFB

  • [title:abbr] would from the title An awesome paper on JabRef produce AAPoJ

  • [camel:abbr] would from the title An awesome paper on JabRef produce AAPOJ

• :lower: Forces the text inserted by the field marker to be in lowercase.

  • [auth:lower] expands the last name of the first author in lowercase

• :upper: Forces the text inserted by the field marker to be in uppercase.

  • [auth:upper] expands the last name of the first author in uppercase

• :capitalize: Changes the first character of each word to uppercase, all other characters are converted to lowercase. For example, an example title will be converted to An Example Title

• :titlecase: Changes the first character of all normal words to uppercase, all function words (see above) are converted to lowercase. Example: example title with An function Word will be converted to Example Title with an Function Word

• :truncateN: Truncates the string after the N:th character and trims any trailing whitespaces. For example, [fulltitle:truncate3] will convert A Title to A T.

• :sentencecase: Changes the first character of the first word to uppercase, all remaining words are converted to lowercase. Example: an Example Title will be converted to An example title

• :regex("pattern", "replacement"): Applies regular expression pattern matching and replacement. For example,

  • [auth.etal:regex("\\.etal","EtAl"):regex("\\.","And")] will extract the last name of the first author, and the last name of the second author, if there are two authors or .etal if there are more than two. The first regex() replaces .etal with EtAl. The second regex() replaces any . between entries with two authors with And.

• :(x): The string between the parentheses will be inserted if the field marker preceding this modifier resolves to an empty value. The placeholder x may be any string. For instance, the marker [VOLUME:(unknown)] will return the entry's volume if set, and the string unknown if the entry's VOLUME field is not set.

Formatters

Formatters are primarily used as save actions, but their key value can be used as a modifier. All available actions can be found in the list of save actions.

Regular Expressions (RegEx)

Regular expressions (or RegEx for short) match patterns within a string. In other words, they are a way to search for (or replace) text within a closed off sequence of characters. They can enhance citation key patterns by altering modifiers even further (e.g. via :regex("pattern", "replacement")). Another use case for them is to replace existing key patterns.

Documentation and examples for RegEx syntax can be found in the Java documentation and in the Jabref documentation.

Keep in mind, Jabref uses a Java flavored regular expressions engine (there are multiple engines) and therefore treats \ and some other special meta-characters as escape characters. If you want to include any backslash into your RegEx, you have to use \\ instead of \.

Replace via Regular Expression

In addition to using regular expression replacement as modifiers of the field markers within citation key patterns, regular expression matching and replacement can be done after the key patterns have been applied. In this case, the regular expression and replacement string are entered in the separate text fields above the citation key patterns section. If the replacement string is empty, then matches of the regular expression will be removed from the generated key.

The regex (?<=.{12}+).+ with an empty replacement string will cut the length of all citation keys to 12.

Removing unwanted characters

The citation key generator preferences contain an option for removing unwanted characters. Add or remove characters to the right of "Remove the following characters:" to control which characters are included in the citation keys.

Removing - from this list will allow it to be used while generating citation keys.

Default citation key pattern

If you have not defined a key pattern for a certain entry type, the Default pattern will be used. You can change the default pattern - its setting is above the list of entry types in the Citation key generator section of the Preferences dialog.

The default key pattern is [auth][year], and this could produce keys like e.g. Yared1998 If the key is not unique in the current database, it is made unique by adding one of the letters a-z until a unique key is found. Thus, the labels might look like:

Yared1998 Yared1998a Yared1998b

Note: In order for your changes to be retained, you must hit "enter" on your keyboard before clicking on the "Save" button.

Changing the default citation key pattern

To change the citation key pattern to [authors][camel] for all libraries without individual settings, execute the following steps:

1. Open the preferences
2. Navigate to "Citation key generator"
3. Change the default pattern to [authors][camel]
4. Press "Enter" (forgetting to do this is a leading cause of puzzlement)

5. Click "Save"

Changing the citation key pattern for one library

To change the citation key patterns for a single library to [auth][shortyear],

1. Make sure the library is open and selected in the JabRef main window
2. From the "Library" menu, open the "Citation key pattern" setting
3. Set the pattern for the desired entry types, and press the apply button.

To customize entry types, select the menu File → Preferences → Entry types.

When customizing an entry type, you both define how its entry editor should look, and what it takes for JabRef to consider an entry complete. You can both make changes to the existing entry types, and define new ones.

Using the entry customization dialog

The entry customization interface is divided into two areas. On the left side all entry types (including any custom types) are listed. If you select a type from the left side, the right area shows all fields for the selected entry.

Adding and removing entry types

The currently available entry types are listed in the left panel.

To add a new entry type, you must enter a name for it in the text field below the type list, and click Add. The new entry type will be added to the list, and selected for modification.

To remove a custom entry type, select it and click the trash icon. This operation is only available for custom entry types that are not merely modifications of standard types. It is not possible to remove a standard entry type.

Editing entry types

When an entry type is selected, the current required and optional fields are listed on the right. A radio button indicates and allows to change the field's type from required to optional and vice versa.

To add a new field, edit the text field below the list, or select a field name from the dropdown menu, then click Add. The chosen field name will be added at the end of the list.

To remove a field select it in the list and click the trash icon to remove it.

To change the order of the fields you can use drag and drop.

Either/or fields

Certain entry types have an either-or condition in their required fields. For instance, a book entry is complete with either the author or the editor field, or both. To indicate such a condition in a custom entry type, you should add a field named as the set of alternative fields separated by slashes, for instance author/editor indicates the condition mentioned above for the book entry type.

JabRef is highly customizable, allowing users to get the behaviour they expect.

The File → Preference menu command allows you to configure the JabRef interface, and to set the default features of your libraries. Features specific to a given library are configured in the Library menu. For example, while the default key patterns are set in File → Preferences → Citation key generator → Key patterns, key patterns specific to a library can be set in Library → Citation key patterns.

Location

The Entry Preview is located inside the Entry Editor (except when navigated to the File annotations or {} biblatex source tab):

You can display the entry preview as a separate tab (see screenshot above) by checking the box Show preview as a tab in entry editor in the entry preview settings Options > Preferences > Entry preview > Current Preview (see screenshot below).

Layouts/Styles

The entry preview displays either the Customized Preview Style or a certain Citation Style. You can select the styles that should be available for display in Options → Preferences → Entry preview. In Available you find all styles selectable for display, in Selected all styles already selected for display:

You can switch between all selected styles (customized preview and citation styles) in the entry preview in the main window by pressing F9.

Display Mechanism

The layout is automatically created using the same mechanism as used by the Custom export filter facility. When previewed, an entry is processed using one of the selected layouts/styles to produce HTML code which is displayed by the preview panel.

Modification of the Customized Preview Style

To customize the appearance and contents of the customize entry preview you need to edit/modify the customized preview style in the entry preview settings (see screenshot above) using the custom export filter syntax described in the Documentation.

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 → Preferences, tab External file types.

A file type is specified by a graphical icon, a name, 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.

This feature is available through File → Preferences → Protected terms files.

In JabRef you write the contents of all fields the same way as you would in a text editor, with one exception: to reference a string, enclose the name of the string in a set of # characters, e.g.: '#jan# 1997', which will be interpreted as the string named jan followed by 1997.

Strings can be edited by Library → Edit string constants or pressing a button in the toolbar.

Strings are the BibTeX equivalent to constants in a programming language. Each string is defined with a unique name and a content. Elsewhere in the database, the name can be used to represent the content.

For instance, if many entries are from a journal with an abbreviation that may be hard to remember, such as 'J. Theor. Biol.' (Journal of Theoretical Biology), a string named JTB could be defined to represent the journal's name. Instead of repeating the exact journal name in each entry, the characters '#JTB#' (without quotes) are put into the journal field of each, ensuring the journal name is written identically each time.

A string reference can appear anywhere in a field, always by enclosing the string's name in a pair of '#' characters. This syntax is specific for JabRef, and differs slightly from the BibTeX notation that is produced when you save your database. Strings can by default be used for all standard BibTeX fields, and in Options → Preferences → File you can opt to enable strings for non-standard fields as well. In the latter case you can specify a set of fields that are excepted from string resolving, and here it is recommended to include the 'url' field and other fields that may need to contain the '#' character and that may be processed by BibTeX/LaTeX.

A string may in the same way be referred in the content of another string, provided the referred string is defined before the referring one.

While the order of strings in your BibTeX file is important in some cases, you do not have to worry about this when using JabRef. The strings will be displayed in alphabetical order in the string editor, and stored in the same order, except when a different ordering is required by BibTeX.

For a complete description of string syntax, see the dedicated help.