jabref/jabref/pdf-to-bibtex

PDF to BibTeX

Produce a BibTeX entry describing a PDF paper (its own title, authors, year, ...) using jabkit, JabRef's command-line toolkit.

This skill is about metadata of the PDF. Extracting the entries a paper cites (its "References" section) is a different task, not covered by this skill.

Setup

jabkit runs via JBang — no JDK setup needed. Install JBang if missing:

curl -Ls https://sh.jbang.dev | bash -s - app setup   # Linux/macOS

iex "& { $(iwr -useb https://ps.jbang.dev) } app setup"   # Windows

Then install jabkit on the PATH (the same command also updates it):

jbang app install --fresh --force jabkit@jabref

One-off run without installation:

jbang --fresh jabkit@jabref --help

Basic usage

jabkit convert --input paper.pdf --input-format pdfMerged --output paper.bib

Omit --output to print BibTeX to stdout. Add --porcelain before the subcommand for script-friendly output:

jabkit -p convert --input paper.pdf --input-format pdfMerged

PDF importer formats

Pass one of these as --input-format:

--input-format "*" auto-detects the format (also works for non-PDF inputs).

Recommended workflow

1. Run with pdfMerged first. Besides merging the other importers' results, it looks up any DOI, arXiv eprint, or ISBN found in the PDF online and merges the fetched metadata into the entry — no separate DOI lookup is needed.
2. Validate the resulting library:

``bash jabkit check paper.bib ``

Batch conversion

for f in papers/*.pdf; do
  jabkit -p convert --input "$f" --input-format pdfMerged >> library.bib
done

Afterwards generate citation keys for all entries:

jabkit citationkeys generate library.bib --output library.bib

Related

• Extract the works a paper cites (its "References" section): the pdf-extract-references skill.
• Write metadata back into PDFs (reverse direction): jabkit pdf update --citation-key <key> --input library.bib --input-format bibtex
• Full CLI reference: the jabkit skill in this repository.