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BibTeX Formatter and Cleaner

Paste BibTeX exported from Google Scholar, Zotero or a publisher’s site to get consistent indentation, field order and aligned equals signs, sort entries by key, year or author, remove duplicates and fields you don’t need such as abstract and file, and check for syntax errors, duplicate keys and missing required fields.

Runs in your browser — nothing you enter is uploaded

Remove fields
Cleaned up

How to use

  1. Paste the contents of your .bib file on the left.
  2. Choose indentation, sorting and fields to remove; the result updates on the right.
  3. Review the problems listed below, then copy or download references.bib.

Options explained

Field order
author, title, journal/booktitle, volume, number, pages, publisher, year, doi and so on, with any other fields after them.
Duplicates
Entries with the same key (case-insensitive) or the same DOI keep only the first one.
Required fields
Checked against the standard BibTeX styles for article, book, inproceedings, phdthesis and other types.

Before and after

Pasted entries often have mixed case, no alignment and fields in export order. With the default settings and abstract removed, this input:

@Article{Smith2020, title={Deep Learning for Graphs}, author={Smith, Jane and Lee, Wei}, year=2020, journal={Journal of Graph ML}, volume={12}, number={3}, pages={45--67}, doi={10.1000/xyz123}, abstract={Long text}}

becomes:

@article{Smith2020,
  author  = {Smith, Jane and Lee, Wei},
  title   = {Deep Learning for Graphs},
  journal = {Journal of Graph ML},
  volume  = {12},
  number  = {3},
  pages   = {45--67},
  year    = 2020,
  doi     = {10.1000/xyz123}
}

The entry type is lowercased, the fields follow the standard order, and the equals signs are aligned. The values themselves are unchanged.

Frequently asked questions

Will my content change?

Field values are kept as they are, including braces and LaTeX commands, and @string macros are preserved. Only layout, order and the fields you choose to remove change.

What happens to entries with syntax errors?

They are skipped and reported with an approximate line number, while the rest are formatted. A missing closing brace or comma is the usual cause.

Is my file uploaded?

No. Parsing and formatting happen entirely in your browser.

Privacy

This tool runs entirely in your browser. Your files and text are processed on your device and are never uploaded to our servers.

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