RIS to BibTeX Converter
Free. No signup. Runs in your browser.
Upload or paste a .ris file from EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley, Web of Science, Scopus, or PubMed and get clean BibTeX. Type codes (JOUR, CHAP, CPAPER, THES, RPRT) map to the right entry type, page fields (SP / EP) combine into a proper range, multi-author AU lines stay in order, and citekeys are generated as lastnameYearWord instead of opaque IDs – ready to drop into your .bib without breaking the compile.
How to convert RIS to a BibTeX file online
thelatexlab.com/ris-to-bibtex/ for next time.
.ris file using the upload button, or paste the text directly. The parser handles single entries and large multi-entry exports. Each entry runs from TY - to ER - ; the parser tolerates blank lines between entries and trailing whitespace.
Kr{\"a}mer) for older bibtex setups. Default is BibLaTeX.
Where most RIS converters break
@article{ref_1, ...}) or the parser’s internal temp ID (@article{temp_id_a3f9, ...}). That means after conversion you still have to rewrite every \cite{...} by hand. The tool generates lastnameYearWord keys (e.g. lecun2015deep) directly from the bibliographic data, with collision handling.
lastnameYearWord
generated from metadata
& (Cell & Molecular Biology), %, #, _, or $. These are active characters in LaTeX. A bare & in a journal field produces Misplaced alignment tab character & and a compile failure – the textbook undefined-control-sequence or alignment-tab error. The tool escapes all ten reserved characters automatically.
\&
auto-escaped
plain, abbrv, IEEEtran, and acmart, unprotected titles get case-folded: “DNA repair in RNA viruses” becomes “Dna repair in rna viruses”. The portable fix is wrapping all-caps tokens in braces: {DNA}, {RNA}, {HIV}, {COVID-19}. Applied at conversion regardless of what the source RIS title looked like.
{DNA}
applied at conversion
@misc
RIS type codes go well beyond JOUR and BOOK – CHAP (book chapter), CPAPER / CONF (conference paper), THES / MTHES (PhD / Master’s thesis), RPRT (report), ELEC (electronic source), DATA (dataset). Simpler converters that only recognise JOUR and BOOK drop everything else into @misc, losing the structural cue. The tool maps the full common set to @inproceedings, @incollection, @phdthesis, @mastersthesis, @techreport, and keeps the per-row override available if a particular entry needs to flip.
SP / EP fields combine into the BibTeX pages field with a proper -- en-dash. DO (DOI), SN (ISSN/ISBN), and UR (URL) are preserved across the round-trip so a downstream pipeline can re-resolve. Accented names from the RIS source are escaped to LaTeX macros under Legacy BibTeX (Kr{\"a}mer) and passed through as UTF-8 under BibLaTeX.Frequently asked questions
RIS is the standard interchange format for citation managers. You export it from EndNote (File → Export → Output Style: RefMan RIS), Zotero (right-click a collection → Export → RIS), Mendeley (File → Export → RIS), Web of Science / Scopus / PubMed (the “Export” or “Send to” dialog has an RIS option). Each entry is a series of two-letter tag lines (TY - for type, AU - for author, TI - for title, ER - to mark the end). If you have a .bib file from a different reference manager and want the other direction, see references conversion from Word for the Word-to-LaTeX path.
Yes. The RIS specification leaves room for vendor-specific tags, but the core tags (TY, AU, TI, JO / JF, VL, IS, SP, EP, PY, DO, UR, SN, ER) are common across all four. Unknown tags are dropped quietly rather than causing the entry to fail. If a particular field doesn’t make it across, paste a single problem entry to see exactly what was parsed.
Three common culprits: (1) the file has a UTF-8 BOM or non-RIS preamble at the top – delete anything before the first TY - ; (2) entries are missing the closing ER - marker, which makes the parser merge two entries into one; (3) the file is actually a different format (NBIB from PubMed, EndNote .enw, or BibTeX) – check the first line. Each failing entry shows up inline with the reason so you can fix the source.
Yes – DO becomes doi, SN becomes issn or isbn depending on the entry type, UR becomes url (when not redundant with the DOI). They’re preserved so you can re-resolve downstream – paste the DOI into /doi-to-bibtex/ if you want a fresh CrossRef lookup, or the ISBN into /isbn-to-bibtex/ for a book record.
Free, no signup. Parsing runs entirely in your browser – the RIS file or pasted text never touches our server, no network call is made. The output exists in your browser session and disappears when you close the tab.
Yes, reference cleanup at that scale is a service. If the references live in a Word manuscript or thesis, see the references-conversion guide and our thesis LaTeX formatting service. For a standalone .bib cleanup, email a sample to help.thelatexlab@gmail.com with the target bibstyle and we’ll quote it.
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