ProofreaderPro.ai

Free BibTeX Generator

Turn DOIs and references into clean BibTeX. Paste bare DOIs, doi.org links or a plain reference list; DOIs resolve straight to their registered records, plain entries are matched against the scholarly databases, and every match becomes a ready BibTeX entry with a readable key and capital-protected title. Copy per entry or download the whole .bib.

1. Paste references or DOIs, one per line. 2. Generate. 3. Copy entries or download the .bib file. Free and unlimited, up to 100 entries per run.
Entries built from real database recordsFree and unlimited, no account needed
Academic researcher using ProofreaderPro.aiAcademic researcher using ProofreaderPro.aiAcademic researcher using ProofreaderPro.aiAcademic researcher using ProofreaderPro.aiAcademic researcher using ProofreaderPro.ai
84,000+
International Researchers
4.8
Average Rating

Trusted by researchers publishing in

ElsevierSpringer NatureWileyCambridge University PressOxford University PressTaylor & FrancisSAGE PublishingIEEEMDPI

How to generate BibTeX in three steps

01

Paste DOIs or references

Both work, even mixed in one run: bare DOIs and doi.org links resolve directly, while plain references are matched by title, author and year against trusted open scholarly databases.

02

Each entry resolves to a record

The generator reads the metadata the publisher registered: authors, title, journal or book, year, volume, issue, pages and the DOI itself, and maps it to the right entry type: @article, @book, @incollection or @misc.

03

Copy or download

Copy entries one at a time, copy the whole set, or hit Download .bib and drop the file into Overleaf, Zotero, Mendeley or JabRef. Keys follow the author-year-word convention and are yours to rename.

Why LaTeX writers generate BibTeX here

Registered metadata

Every field comes from the record the publisher deposited for that DOI, which removes the retyping step where most .bib errors are born.

Capitals protected

DNA, Bayesian, CRISPR: capitalized words after the first are braced so classic BibTeX styles cannot lowercase them in your bibliography.

Readable keys

Author, year, first significant title word: watson1953molecular. ASCII-safe, deduplicated within a run, and trivially renameable.

One-click .bib file

Download the entire resolved list as references.bib, ready for Overleaf or any reference manager that imports BibTeX.

Why your .bib file deserves registry-grade entries

In a LaTeX workflow, the bibliography is only ever as good as the .bib file behind it. LaTeX formats whatever the entries contain, perfectly and obediently, which means a typo in a volume number or a lowercased DNA is not a formatting problem but a data problem, reproduced identically in every draft and every resubmission. Building entries from each DOI's registered record, the metadata the publisher deposited when the DOI was created, fixes the data at the source: authors, title, venue, year, volume, issue and pages arrive as registered, not as retyped.

The two chronic .bib diseases are both handled at generation time. The first is capital erasure: classic BibTeX styles lowercase titles, so unprotected entries print dna, crispr and bayesian. The generator braces capitalized words after the first, which pins them exactly as written in every style. The second is key chaos: a bibliography where keys look like temp1, paper_final and xyz2023 becomes unmaintainable within a month. Author-year-word keys like shannon1948mathematical make \cite commands readable in the source, which is a small daily quality-of-life gain across an entire thesis.

The plain-reference mode earns its keep when you inherit a reference list that was never in BibTeX: a supervisor's Word document, an old paper of your own, or a list drafted with an AI assistant. Each entry is matched against the databases with deliberately strict acceptance, so what comes back is the real record or an honest not found, and a not-found entry is worth attention: check it for typos, and if it came from an AI tool, run the list through the AI citation checker to see exactly which entries have matching records and which need manual verification. If you want formatted references instead of BibTeX, the DOI to citation converter produces APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE and Vancouver entries from the same records, and the citation generator covers sources with no DOI at all.

For engineering and computer science writers, the numbered bracket style your template produces is usually IEEE; our IEEE citation generator shows what those entries should look like outside LaTeX. And when the .bib file is finally in order, the prose deserves the same treatment: the ProofreaderPro editor proofreads your manuscript with tracked changes and leaves your \cite commands and math untouched.

Example: one DOI in, one BibTeX entry out

Paste 10.1038/171737a0, the DOI of Watson and Crick's 1953 DNA structure paper, and this is the entry the generator returns: an @article with every field taken from the DOI's registered record, a readable citation key, and braces protecting the capitals a BibTeX style would otherwise lowercase.

@article{watson1953molecular,
  author    = {Watson, J. D. and Crick, F. H. C.},
  title     = {Molecular {Structure} of {Nucleic} {Acids}: {A} {Structure} for {Deoxyribose} {Nucleic} {Acid}},
  journal   = {Nature},
  year      = {1953},
  volume    = {171},
  number    = {4356},
  pages     = {737--738},
  doi       = {10.1038/171737a0}
}

Produced by the generator above from this DOI's real registered metadata. Cite it in LaTeX with \cite{watson1953molecular}.

BibTeX generator FAQs

What is BibTeX, and who needs it?
BibTeX is the bibliography format of the LaTeX world. Your references live in a .bib file as structured entries, each with a citation key like watson1953molecular; in the document you write \cite{watson1953molecular}, and LaTeX formats the bibliography in whatever style the journal template specifies. Anyone writing in LaTeX or Overleaf needs .bib entries, which is most of physics, mathematics, computer science, engineering and a growing slice of economics and the quantitative social sciences.
Which entry types does the generator produce?
Journal articles become @article with journal, volume, number and pages; books become @book with publisher and edition; book chapters become @incollection with booktitle and editor; anything else becomes @misc. The type is chosen from the registered record's own classification, and the DOI is always included when the record has one, because most modern bibliography styles print it.
How are the citation keys generated?
First author's surname, then the year, then the first significant word of the title: watson1953molecular, shannon1948mathematical. Diacritics are flattened so the keys stay ASCII, and duplicate keys within a run get a number appended. Keys are only labels, so rename them to your own convention freely; nothing else in the entry depends on them.
Why are some title words wrapped in extra braces?
Classic BibTeX styles lowercase everything in a title except the first word, which silently turns DNA into dna and Bayesian into bayesian. The generator braces every capitalized word after the first, {DNA} and {Bayesian}, which tells BibTeX to print those capitals exactly as written. If your style keeps title casing anyway, the braces change nothing, so they are safe to leave in.

Bibliography sorted. Now proofread the paper itself.

The ProofreaderPro editor polishes grammar, clarity and academic register across your full manuscript with tracked changes you approve line by line, and never touches your citations or math. Free to try.

Proofread my paper free
More free tools:Citation GeneratorAPA Citation GeneratorMLA Citation GeneratorChicago Citation GeneratorHarvard Referencing GeneratorIEEE Citation GeneratorVancouver Citation GeneratorAI Citation GeneratorChatGPT Citation GeneratorClaude Citation GeneratorGemini Citation GeneratorAI Citation CheckerCitation FinderJournal FinderDOI to Citation ConverterReference Format ConverterReference AlphabetizerIn-Text Citation FixerAnnotated Bibliography GeneratorTitle Case ConverterAll Free ToolsAI Proofreader
From our blog:How to Proofread a LaTeX Paper in Overleaf (Without Breaking Math)IEEE Citation Guide for Engineering and CS PapersAPA vs MLA vs Chicago vs IEEE: Which Citation Style Do You Need?

Ready to polish your next paper?

Proofread, humanize, paraphrase and translate your academic writing in one place. Free to start, no credit card required.

Get Started Free
Proofreader Pro AI
Refine your research with ProofreaderPro.ai, the world's leading AI-powered proofreader, tailored for academic text.
ProofreaderProAI, Greenleaf Ave, Staten Island, 10310 New York
Ā© 2026 ProofreaderPro.ai. A leading academic proofreader, editor & humanizer. Made with ā¤ļø and linguistically sound syntax 🌳s