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.
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How to generate BibTeX in three steps
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.
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.
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?
Which entry types does the generator produce?
How are the citation keys generated?
Why are some title words wrapped in extra braces?
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.
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