kbib: A tool to get bibtex entries from DOIs or PDFs.

When writing a research article, managing a large number of references to other articles, books, and other sources can be a challenging task. It involves tasks such as copying citations from journal pages, ensuring accuracy and correctness, and avoiding repetitions. This process can be time-consuming and prone to errors.

To address these challenges, I have developed a command-line utility called kbib. This tool is designed to help researchers manage their references easily and efficiently. With kbib, you can streamline the process of organizing and formatting citations, saving you valuable time and effort.

⚡ Features

1. Get bibtex information from DOI.
2. Get bibtex information from article pdf.
3. Get full list of references of an article as a .bib file.
4. Directly rename pdf files with bibtex information.
5. Find duplicate bib entries in Tex/Bib files.

🛠️ Installation

Download and install the latest package from the release section or directly by pip

pip install kbib

For parsing bibtex information from PDF files, optional dependencies need to be installed

pip install kbib['pdf']

🚀 Usage

screencast.mp4

Use the command line tool kbib as

kbib [-h] [-bib DOI] [-ref DOI] [-pdf [PDF [PDF ...]]] [-ren [PDF [PDF ...]]] [-dup [BIB [BIB ...]]] [-o DOI]

Argument	Description
-bib	DOI to get bibtex entry
-ref	DOI to get bibtex entries for all the references
-pdf	PDF file name(s) to get bibtex info
-ren	PDF file name(s) to rename with bibtex info
-dup	Bib/Tex file name(s) to find duplicates.
-o	Output bib file

Use cases

• Get bibtex from a DOI

  kbib -bib https://doi.org/10xxxxxx

• Get bibtex from a DOI and store in a file 'ref.bib'

  kbib -bib https://doi.org/10xxxxxx -o ref.bib

• Get the full reference list of an article as bibtex entries and save as ref.bib

  kbib -ref https://doi.org/10xxxxxx -o ref.bib

• Get bibtex from a PDF named article.pdf

  kbib -pdf article.pdf

• Get bibtex from all pdfs in the current folder

  kbib -pdf *.pdf

• Rename pdf files with bibtex information

  kbib -ren article.pdf
  # or
  kbib -ren *.pdf

• Find duplicate bib entries in bibtex files.

  kbib -dup article_1.bib article_2.bib

• If a .tex file is provided, it will find the duplicates that are cited in the tex file

  kbib -dup article.tex article_1.bib article_2.bib

⚓Limitation:

• kbib parses DOI information from Crossref API. So if the article is not indexed in Crossref database this tool will fail to get the necessary information. Also the API may temporarily block requests from an IP if a large number of queries are made within a short period of time.
• Special/Latex characters in the title may gets messed up during the API call. One needs to be careful using title field for the bibtex created by kbib.
• For bibtex keys and renaming files, kbib uses format as <Short Journal Name>_<Volume>_<Year>_<Last name of first author>, which is presently hardcoded in the tool. Therefore, one can not use any desired format through the command line.

⏳ Work-in-Progress:

• Concurrent/Parallel API calls for faster parsing of bibtex information.