Tools

ISBN to BibTeX Converter

Free. No signup. Runs in your browser.

Paste one ISBN, or up to 50, and get a BibTeX @book entry for each book, ready for your .bib file. Each ISBN is looked up in OpenLibrary, then in Google Books if OpenLibrary has no record. A mistyped ISBN is caught before the lookup.

How to convert an ISBN to BibTeX

Step 1

Paste your ISBNs

ISBN-13 or ISBN-10, with or without hyphens, one per line. Up to 50 at once.

Step 2

Pick the output

BibTeX keeps accents as UTF-8 for biblatex and biber. Legacy BibTeX writes them as LaTeX macros for older bibtex setups.

Step 3

Check, then copy

Compare each entry with the book (see below), then Copy one entry, or Copy all and Download .bib for the batch.

The lookups go from your browser straight to OpenLibrary and Google Books, not to our server.

Where to find a book's ISBN

Look on the copyright page (the back of the title page) or on the back cover, above the barcode. An ISBN-13 starts with 978 or 979.

Every edition and format has its own ISBN: the hardback, the paperback and the ebook of the same book all differ. Use the ISBN of the edition you actually read, so the year and publisher in the entry match it.

Check the entry against the book

Book databases are filled in by many contributors, so some details come back wrong or missing. A quick look at the copyright page fixes them:

  • Authors. Series editors and translators sometimes appear as authors. Delete them, or move them to an editor field.
  • Year. It should be the year of your edition. Databases sometimes record a reprint year instead, so check it against the copyright page.
  • Edition and volume. These are not filled in. Add an edition or volume field yourself (see the FAQ for the format).
  • Title capitals. Titles come back as the database has them, for example "The art of computer programming". Fix the capitals, and wrap acronyms in braces ({SQL}) so the bibliography style keeps them.

Citing a chapter instead of the whole book

The converter gives an @book entry for the whole book. To cite one chapter, change the type with the Type menu and add the chapter details:

You are citingEntry typeAdd these fields
The whole book@bookNothing more
A chapter of a book by the same author(s)@inbookchapter or pages
A chapter by other authors in an edited book@incollectionThe chapter's author and title, plus booktitle, editor and pages

Where most ISBN to BibTeX converters break

One database is not enough

OpenLibrary is maintained by volunteers, so coverage is uneven for recent, non-English and self-published books. A converter that asks only OpenLibrary says "not found" for real ISBNs. This one tries OpenLibrary's book records, then its search index, then Google Books.

Subtitles get dropped

Both databases store "Artificial Intelligence" and "A Modern Approach" as separate fields. BibTeX has no subtitle field for @book, so the converter joins them: "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach".

Dates arrive as text

A publication date can come back as "January 1, 2023" or "2023-01-01". The converter keeps the four-digit year, which is what bibliography styles expect.

Frequently asked questions

No. Both work, with or without hyphens. The isbn field keeps the ISBN you pasted, or the ISBN-13 when the record comes from Google Books.

The last digit of an ISBN is a check digit calculated from the others. If it does not match, at least one digit was mistyped. Compare the number with the book's copyright page.

Neither OpenLibrary nor Google Books has a record for it, which happens with new, self-published and some university-press books. Write the entry by hand:

@book{lastname2020word,
  author    = {Lastname, Firstname},
  title     = {The Full Title: With the Subtitle},
  publisher = {Publisher},
  year      = {2020},
  isbn      = {9780000000000},
}

Add them to the entry after you copy it. With biblatex, edition = {3} prints as "3rd ed.". Classic BibTeX styles such as plain expect a word, edition = {Third}. For a multi-volume work, add volume = {2}.

Yes, with ISBN to APA and ISBN to MLA.

It is free and needs no signup. The ISBNs go from your browser to OpenLibrary and Google Books and never reach our server. The result is gone when you close the tab, unless you choose to have it emailed to you.

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