This site allows you to convert a text file of references to a BibTeX file. It is maintained by Martin J. Osborne.

To get started, register if you do not have an account, or log in if you do.

Explanatory video: https://youtu.be/uDYHszzWhfk (5:45). Retrieving items from crossref.org during conversion: https://youtu.be/W4-WEwo2esY (5:56).

You upload a plain text file using the utf-8 encoding that either has the references separated by blank lines, like this

(where ← is a line-ending character)

or has one reference on each line, like this

or starts with <li> and has each subsequent reference preceded by <li>, like this

You receive a BibTeX file of the references.

Each reference in the file you upload may start with the authors, as in the examples above, or with the year, like this

Each reference may be preceded by one of the strings \bibitem{}, \bibitem{<label>}, \bibitem[<text>]{<label>}, \noindent, \smallskip, \bigskip, or \item or any of the characters in the string .,[]()|*+, or, if it doesn't start with the year, any digit. If it starts with a string in brackets that contains at least one letter (e.g. [Arrow1990]), the string is interpreted as the label for the item. (An entirely numeric string in brackets is intepreted as a number for the item, and is ignored.) If it starts with the year, the year may be followed by any character in the string |*+.

The script attempts to detect items of the following types: article, book, incollection, inproceedings, mastersthesis, online, phdthesis, techreport, unpublished. It attempts to parse the references into one of these types regardless of their format.

The system does not extract the references from a file that contains other material, so the file you upload should contain only the list of references, not other text.