Using Google Scholar to download BibTeX citations

20 Comments

Google indexes most things on the web. “Most things” includes publications which are searchable through Google Scholar. Google Scholar generates BibTeX citations which can be imported into a .bib file or citation database.

To download BibTeX citation go to Google Scholar and search for a publication. Through the cite button below a search result Google provides formatted citations for MLA, APA, and Chicago styles.

google_scholar_search

 

Now click the link “Import into BibTeX” at the bottom of the window to copy and paste the BibTeX citation.

google_scholar_citation_formats

 

You will be presented with the BibTeX citation, here for The TeXbook:

@book{knuth1986texbook,
  title={The texbook},
  author={Knuth, Donald Ervin and Bibby, Duane},
  volume={1993},
  year={1986},
  publisher={Addison-Wesley Reading, MA, USA}
}

 

If you have a Google account, you can configure Google Scholar to show the “Import into BibTeX” on the search result page. Here is how:

  • Login with your Google account
  • Use the small down arrow in the top right corner to access Settings
  • At the bottom, select “Show links to import into” and select BibTeX
  • Click Save

google_scholar_bibtex_result_page

 

As long as you are logged-in, you can directly access the BibTeX citation.

google_scholar_bibtex_link

 

It’s always better to double check the citation generated by Google Scholar. Especially if the titles or author names contain special characters such as symbols or umlauts. In the example, the title should be changed to:

title={The \TeX{}book}

 
What method or service do you use to generate citations? Let me know below.

20 Comments

  1. HT de Beer

    Be careful with blindly copy-pasting Google scholar’s bibtex entries. I found that regularly there are omissions, errors, or even completely faulty entries. I don’t know how they collect the data for these bibliographic entries, but I doubt that there will be much human involvement in the process. Furthermore, as there does not seem to be a way to send in corrections to google scholar, chances are faulty entries stay faulty for a long time.

    For that matter, it’d be a great idea to have some sort of bibliographic wikipedia where we all (as a scientific and scholarly community) would combine, refine, and improve our bibliographies.

    Reply

    • tom

      Thanks for your thoughts on this. I agree, it is important to check Google Scholar citations for their correctness before using them. I just can’t believe typing BibTeX manually is what most people do. A bibliographic Wikipedia would certainly be a great resource.
      Thanks, Tom

      Reply

      • HT de Beer

        Typing manually is not that odd. For one thing, processing a reference, i.e., finding it, reading it, thinking about it, using it, takes a long time. Carefully writing out the bibliographic information doesn’t take long compared to that.

        Furthermore, in some fields, literature referencing is done much more rigorous than in others. For example, in History it matters what exact source you used as these sources are the foundation of historiography. Other historians should be able to find the exact same source, not another edition, not something similar. Plus, many a source is not a simple article or proceedings but a letter, archival record, painting, or whatever else. It is hard, if not impossible, to find automatic generated bibliographic entries that fulfill the requirements of the historic art.

        Then again, you would like people who use references, i.e., the highly educated, to have enough computational thinking skill to understand and look for pre-existing bibliographic items when they’re citing sources and articles that either from publication databases or modern publications.

  2. jankees

    I recommend using a reference source manager, such as Papers (papers app.com, not free) or Mendeley (mendeley.com, free). This lets you keep the PDF of your reference in a fully searchable database, and if your source is a journal article, it will (almost always, at least in the case of Papers) fetch the citation data automatically and correctly.

    This allows you to manage 1 collection from which you can export a bib-file in whatever style you wish, with all or a subset of entries, and also other versions such as EndNote if you want to share your bibliography with non-LaTeX users.

    A nice touch in the Papers app, I find, is that you can bring up a quick search tool when writing a manuscript, so you can look up the paper you want to reference and insert the citation code blurb (i.e. “\cite{CITEKEY}”) with the click of a button. This works in any LaTeX editor (as well as MS Word if you use EndNote).

    Reply

    • tom

      Thanks for the insight. I heard and read about Mendeley, but haven’t tried the software yet. Will add it to my todo-list…

      Thanks again, Tom

      Reply

  4. Michelle

    Never see a “Link to Bibtex” in google scholar. NEVER. AM logged into my google account, have gone through settings and selected option for saving Bibtex info. Nothing. Any help?

    Reply

    • tom

      Hi Michelle,

      Do you see a “cite” button below every search result? You can get the BibTeX results through that link too.

      Btw. You might also be interested in http://doi2bib.org, which fetches bibtex entries from digital object identifiers (doi). You can find dois on almost every article and journal website.

      Cheers,
      Tom

      Reply

    • HT de Beer

      If I look in the “Scholar Settings”, I see a section headed with “Bibliography manager”. There are two options. By default, the option “Don’t show any citation import links” is selected. Instead, select the option “Show links to import citation into [ ]” and, in the selection box following, select “BibTeX”. Save your changes and reload.

      Reply

    • tom

      Google Scholar is a search engine for scholarly literature. Therefore, you won’t be able to find citations for websites. This page explains how to manually create a BibTeX citation entry for a web-based resource.

      HTH, Tom

      Reply

  6. Also check out bibtexsearch.com – they have a a large number of Google Scholar records but including additional fields that scholar tends to omit (doi, issn, etc).

    Reply

    • tom

      Thanks for the link. It seems some of their BibTeX entries are incomplete. My suggestion is to use http://doi2bib.org instead. Doi2bib retrieves BibTeX entries directly from the publishers, including DOIs.

      Cheers, Tom

      Reply

  7. Brunno

    Do you have any insights on how to perform a search on google scholar and get the BibTex from that search?

    I am sorry. I am referring on how to do that using R.

    Reply

      • Brunno

        Hi Tom,

        Thanks for your reply!

        There is the code to find references, get doi and than print using bibtex format:

        library("rcrossref")

# I am using Lotters et al. 2003 as an example. It does not have to be a complete reference. E.g. you could use only the title or even key words.
# You can determine the number of results in rows and sort by relevance, year, or alphabetic. Use ?cr_search for more details.

res <- cr_search(query = "Lötters et al. 2003. Another New Riparian Dendrobatid Frog Species from the Upper Amazon Basin of Peru. Journal of Herpetology 37(4):707-713", rows = 1, sort = "relevance")

doi <- res$doi # get doi

cat(cr_cn(dois = gsub("http://dx.doi.org/","",doi), format = "bibtex")) # print bibtex format

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