External tools

Plugins

Entry fetchers

Export filters

Endnote filter set

Journal lists

External tools

Export-Filter Editor

by Felix Wilke

Using this tool you can easily create a custom export filter for JabRef to build you own bibliography style.

It supports:

Export-Filter Editor

PocketBib

by Graham Dennis

PocketBib is a BibTeX library reader for iPads and iPhones that's compatible with JabRef. With PocketBib you can search, browse and read the linked papers in your library, and synchronise them over Dropbox.

PocketBib

Bibtex4word

by Mike Brookes

Bibtex4Word is an add-in for Microsoft Word that allows the citation of references and the insertion of a bibliography into your document using your choice of formatting style. It is lightweight, transparent and does not mess up your documents.

Bibtex4Word

Feinerleiser

by Niklas Alt

Feinerleiser is a tool for improving the JabRef-LibreOffice integration when writing for the humanities. This tool can be run to finalize a document, providing citation features that are not supported by JabRef itself.

Feinerleiser

BibSync

by Daniel Mendler

BibSync is a tool to synchronize your paper database with a BibTeX file, and supports synchronization with DOI and arXiv.

BibSync

Plugins

JabRef offers a plugin framework that allows the application to be extended with further import and export filters, web search modules (fetchers), layout formatters, cite-while-you-write modules and general sidepane components.

Installing plugins

If you are using JabRef 2.5 or later, you can install plugins using the Plugin Manager. Go to Plugins -> Manage Plugins. Click Install plugin, and choose the jar file containing the plugin.

For JabRef versions 2.4.x, plugins must be installed manually. This is fortunately quite simple - you must create a directory named plugins right below the directory where JabRef is installed (specifically, the directory where the file named JabRef-X.jar is located, where X is the version number), and drop your plugins there. All plugins (in the form of jar files) in this directory will be loaded automatically when you start up JabRef.

Plugins available for download

BibSonomy plugin

by BibSonomy team

Home page (see also for source code)

BibSonomy is a free online platform for collaborative sharing of bookmarks and scientific references, based on the BibTeX-format. Its features comprise e.g. the comfortable maintenance of online publication lists. With this plugin, it is possible to fetch, store and delete BibTeX entries from BibSonomy; in this way, JabRef can be used as a client application to remotely manage the online bibliography stored centrally at bibsonomy.org.

Push to Emacsclient

Version 1.0
Plugin - Source code

This plugin provides the same functionality as the built-in Push to Emacs feature, except that it uses emacsclient instead of gnuclient to communicate with Emacs. This requires a recent version of Emacs to work.
Since JabRef 2.8, this behavior is built-in.

Christoph Lehner's plugins

by Christoph Lehner

Home page (see also for source code)

The page contains the following plugins:

Rename file plugin

by Sergey Kor

This plugin allows to automatically rename/copy/delete attached files. Files can be renamed according to their BibTeX entry. The rename pattern uses the same syntax as a BibTeX key generator of JabRef. Download
JabRef 2.9 will contain the rename functionality as part of the “Clean up” functionality.

Paper Reference Relationship Visualization Plugin

by ZHANG Liang

JabRef Paper Reference Relationship Visualization Plugin Project provides a plugin to visualize the reference relationship between selected papers. It is available as separate project on sourceforge.

Developing plugins

A plugin is basically an implementation of one or more of JabRef's interfaces, packaged in a jar file with an XML file describing the plugin and which extension points it connects to. See our Wiki page on getting started writing plugins.

Entry fetchers

JabRef ADS fetcher

by Ryo Igarashi

JabRef plugin for fetching BibTeX entry from “The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System” using Digital Object Identifiers (DOI) More information

Modified JabRef ADS fetcher

by Alexander Hug

This ADS fetcher is modified so one can ask for several parameters like authors, title, year etc. Most useful keywords are predefined in combo-boxes, but may be overwritten by any valid keyword, as described on the ADS homepage and may also be looked up by the “help” button. you may enter either “hug, a” and select “Author” from the combo-box, OR you enter “author=hug, a” and select “None or special keyword”.

Version 0.1
Plugin - Source code

GVK (Gemeinsamer Verbundkatalog) fetcher

by Gemeinsamen Bibliotheksverbund

Home page (see also for source code)

This plugin searches and fetcher entries from the GVK (Gemeinsamer Verbundkatalog).

Export filters

JabRef allows you to create custom export filters. This functionality is described in the help file on Custom export filters. Some users have created export filters that can be useful to many others, and on this page we provide links or direct downloads for some of these export filters.

If you have created one or more export filters that you want to share with other users, please notify us, and we can provide a download from this page, or link to your own page.

Mark Schenk's HTML export filters

Mark Schenk's HTML export filters provide HTML listings of your reference list. The exported HTML comes complete with scripts for quick filtering of the list.

Note: some of Mark Schenk's filters are distributed with JabRef as standard export filters.

Marten Kooiker's RTF export filters

Marten Kooiker has put together a number of export filters outputting RTF references formatted for specific journals.

Download Marten Kooiker's RTF export filters (v1.0a)

Edward Elgar export filters

Christian Bartolomaeus has made an export filter matching the author guidelines of Edward Elgar. The export filter requires definition of two name formatters - please read the included README file.

Download Edward Elgar export filters

International Journal of Greenhouse Gas (IJoGGC) export filters

This filter is a modified version of Edwared Elgar's export filters. It formats the exported .rtf file into the format required by lots of Elsevier Journals. You just have to follow the next few steps:

If you now you go to File > Export, Jabref will open a window where you can choose different types of exportfilters below. Select Files of type: IJoGGC(*.rtf).

RIS export format

by Morten O. Alver

Version 1.0
Plugin - Source code

This plugin provides RIS export format functionality.

Chicago Manual of Style export filters

by Juan Jose Baldrich

Plugin (English) - Plugin (Español)

Export filters for preparation of bibliographies according to the Chicago Manual of Style. More information

Turabian export filters

by Juan Jose Baldrich

Plugin (English) - Plugin (Español)

Export filters for preparation of bibliographies according to the Turabian style.

Endnote filter set

The default EndNote Import filter does not properly parse authors. The EndNote Import from JabRef filter does. Additionally, this filter will recognize a field endnotereftype that will override the default mapping. To install the filter, download and extract the file EndNote.zip. Then follow the directions in the file Readme.txt.

Modifying EndNote Reference Types

Several fields used by BibTeX are not part of EndNote's default Reference Types. While import from JabRef and export to JabRef will work fine without modifying reference types, the field names will not display correctly in EndNote (e.g. an entry window will call the pdf field Custom 1 instead of pdf. Additionally, these fields cannot be added to new entries in EndNote, since they will not appear in the entry window. To modify the EndNote Reference Types, extract EndNote.zip and follow the directions in the file readme.txt.

Export to JabRef

EndNote comes with an export style BibTeX. However, this does not support all BibTeX types and fields, and does not support the additional General Fields supported by JabRef (pdf, owner, key, etc.) If you wish to have these fields supported, extract EndNote.zip and follow the directions in the file readme.txt.

JabRef journal abbreviation lists

JabRef can help you refactor your reference list by automatically abbreviating or unabbreviating journal names. This requires that you keep one or more lists of journal names and their respective abbreviations. to set up these lists, choose Options -> Manage journal abbreviations.

The format of the file is 

<full name> = <abbreviation> [;shortest unique abbreviation[;frequency]].

The two last fields are not currently used, and you can actually safely omit them. The intention of the third field is to contain the “shortest unique abbreviation”, and the fourth field gives frequency (e.g., M for monthly). For instance:

Accounts of Chemical Research=Acc. Chem. Res.;ACHRE4;M

This was done in old versions of the “general journals list” primarily because the information was available.

Downloadable journal abbreviation lists

JabRef includes no list of journals by default. Instead, the management window allows you to edit a personal list of journals, and to reference one or more external lists. To make this process more efficient for you, we offer a couple of lists from this web page, which can be downloaded by clicking a Download button in the External files section of the management window and entering the correct URL. You will then be asked to provide a local filename for the list.

The download URL defaults to the general list linked below, which is a large list of journals, not limited to a single subject area. In addition there are (or will be) other, smaller, lists that contain journals from specific fields. To get one of these, just copy the URL from one of the links below, click Download in JabRef, and paste the URL into the query dialog that appears.

Contribution to journal abbreviation lists

We want to expand both the general 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 by opening a new entry in our Patches section on SourceForge. You can either add your list as an attachment to the patch entry, or keep the list on you own home page and link to it. We will then add your list to this page.

Available journal lists