Education

JabRef - Free Citation and Reference Management App for Windows, macOS and Linux

Hazem Abbas

Jul 28, 2024 — 2 min read

JabRef is an open-source reference management software designed for researchers, students, and academics. It allows users to organize and manage bibliographic data in various formats like BibTeX, BibLaTeX, and other citation styles.

JabRef offers features such as automated metadata retrieval from online databases, keyword grouping, and integration with LaTeX editors.

The app supports collaborative work through shared databases and provides tools for searching, importing, and exporting references. It is available on multiple platforms, including Windows, macOS, and Linux, making it a versatile choice for managing academic references efficiently.

Features

Collect

Search across many online scientific catalogues like CiteSeer, CrossRef, Google Scholar, IEEEXplore, INSPIRE-HEP, Medline PubMed, MathSciNet, Springer, arXiv, and zbMATH
Import options for over 15 reference formats
Easily retrieve and link full-text articles
Fetch complete bibliographic information based on ISBN, DOI, PubMed-ID and arXiv-ID
Extract metadata from PDFs
Import new references directly from the browser with one click using the official browser extension for Firefox, Chrome, Edge, and Vivaldi

Organize

Group your research into hierarchical collections and organize research items based on keywords/tags, search terms, or your manual assignments
Advanced search and filter features
Complete and fix bibliographic data by comparing with curated online catalogs such as Google Scholar, Springer, or MathSciNet
Customizable citation key generator
Customize and add new metadata fields or reference types
Find and merge duplicates
Attach related documents: 20 different kinds of documents supported out of the box, completely customizable and extendable
Automatically rename and move associated documents according to customizable rules
Keep track of what you read: ranking, priority, printed, quality-assured

Cite

Native BibTeX and Biblatex support
Cite-as-you-write functionality for external applications such as Emacs, Kile, LyX, Texmaker, TeXstudio, Vim and WinEdt.
Format references using one of thousands of built-in citation styles or create your own style
Support for Word and LibreOffice/OpenOffice for inserting and formatting citations

Many built-in export options or create your export format
Library is saved as a simple text file, and thus it is easy to share with others via Dropbox and is version-control friendly
Work in a team: sync the contents of your library via a SQL database