DOI to BibTeX Converter
Free. No signup. Runs in your browser.
Paste one or more DOIs, or doi.org links, and get BibTeX entries ready for your .bib file. Each DOI is looked up in CrossRef; accents are escaped, acronyms in titles are brace-protected, and you can change the entry type before you copy.
How to convert a DOI to BibTeX
Step 1
Paste your DOIs
One DOI, or up to 50 at once, one per line. Plain DOIs (10.1038/nature14539), doi.org links and doi: prefixes all work.
Step 2
Pick the output
BibTeX keeps accents as UTF-8 for biblatex and biber. Legacy BibTeX writes them as LaTeX macros (Kr{\"a}mer) for older bibtex setups.
Step 3
Convert and copy
Check each entry's type, then use Copy on one entry, or Copy all and Download .bib for the whole batch.
The lookups run in your browser: your DOIs go straight to CrossRef's public API, not to our server. If one DOI fails, the result says why, and the rest of the batch still converts.
Where to find the DOI of a paper
A DOI is the permanent ID a publisher gives a paper. It always starts with 10. and a slash, for example 10.1038/nature14539.
You will find it on the article's web page, usually under the title or in the "Cite" box, and on the first page of the PDF. A doi.org link works here too, because the DOI is inside it:
https://doi.org/
A publisher's page address usually does not contain the DOI, for example a ScienceDirect link ending in /pii/S0893608014002135, so copy the DOI from that page instead.
How to use the BibTeX in LaTeX or Overleaf
Put the entries in your .bib file, cite them by their key, and compile.
- Paste the entries at the end of your .bib file. In Overleaf it is usually
references.bib. - Cite with the key, which is the text right after
@article{. For example\cite{lecun2015deep}. - Print the list, depending on your setup:
| Your setup | Preamble | Where the list goes |
|---|---|---|
| bibtex | \bibliographystyle{plain} | \bibliography{references} |
| biblatex | \usepackage{biblatex}\addbibresource{references.bib} | \printbibliography |
main.tex
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Deep networks learn features from data \cite{lecun2015deep}.
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{references}
\end{document}Overleaf's guide to bibliography management covers styles and more options.
Where most DOI converters break
Four things go wrong between CrossRef's record and a .bib file that compiles. The converter fixes each one.
Accents arrive as raw UTF-8
CrossRef returns Krämer as raw UTF-8. Under legacy bibtex on pdfLaTeX, that either errors or sorts under the wrong letter. The portable form is Kr{\"a}mer: choose Legacy BibTeX in the To menu to get it. The BibTeX option keeps UTF-8 for biber.
Titles are not brace-protected
"DNA repair in RNA viruses" becomes "Dna repair in rna viruses" under plain, abbrv and most IEEE and ACM styles. The fix is braces around acronyms, {DNA}, {RNA}, which the converter adds.
Ampersands are not escaped
A title with a bare & stops the compile with "Misplaced alignment tab character &". The same goes for %, $, # and _. The converter escapes all of them.
Entry types are often wrong
CrossRef often tags conference papers as journal articles, and preprints take the type the publisher gave them. Styles render each type differently, so a wrong type gives a wrong reference without any error. Each result has a Type menu to fix it.
Citation keys are built from the first author's last name, the year and the first word of the title (lecun2015deep). If two entries would get the same key, each gets a letter: smith2023methoda, smith2023methodb. Chinese, Cyrillic and Arabic names stay as UTF-8 in both outputs: there is no LaTeX accent macro for them, so they need biber or a Unicode-aware style either way.
Frequently asked questions
Paste the DOI into the box above and press Convert. The converter fetches the paper's record from CrossRef and writes it as a BibTeX entry you can copy or download as a .bib file.
Yes. doi.org and dx.doi.org links, doi: prefixes and links that contain the DOI in their path are read as the DOI. A publisher page address without the DOI in it cannot be read, so copy the DOI from that page.
Yes, up to 50 per conversion, one per line or separated by commas. If you paste more, the first 50 are converted and the result tells you how many were skipped.
Check your preamble. If it has \usepackage{biblatex} and \addbibresource{...}, pick BibTeX, which keeps UTF-8. If it has \bibliographystyle{...} and \bibliography{...}, pick Legacy BibTeX so accents come out as macros. When in doubt, run a test compile.
Use the Type menu on that result before copying, for example to switch a conference paper to @inproceedings or a preprint to @misc. If many entries are wrong, the CrossRef data for that publisher is inconsistent, and a manual pass over the .bib is worth it.
Usually a typo, or a DOI that is not registered with CrossRef. Zenodo and figshare datasets are registered with DataCite instead, so they are not found here, and the result says so. arXiv's own DOIs (10.48550/...) are the exception: they are looked up on arXiv. Each failure shows what you pasted and why it failed, so you can fix it without losing the rest of the batch.
It is free and needs no signup. Your DOIs go from your browser to CrossRef's public API and never reach our server. The result stays in your browser and is gone when you close the tab, unless you choose to have it emailed to you.
A DOI becomes a BibTeX entry, which is how LaTeX handles references. Add the entry to your .bib file and cite it with \cite{key}, as shown in How to use the BibTeX in LaTeX or Overleaf above.
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