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.

An explanatory video (5:45) is available at https://youtu.be/uDYHszzWhfk

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 has each reference preceded by <li>, like this

Each reference 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 the year, the year may be followed by any character in the string |*+.

You receive a BibTeX file of the references.

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items of the following types: article, book, incollection, inproceedings, mastersthesis, online, phdthesis, techreport, unpublished.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.