bibtex-manager

The .bib file is the one place a reference is allowed to exist. Every \cite{} in LaTeX, every [@key] in Markdown, and every Zotero item in Word traces back to an entry here that was fetched from an authority, never typed from memory.

Add an entry

1. Resolve the identifier to metadata from an authority. Never write an entry by hand from a memory of the paper.
   • DOI: curl -sL -H "Accept: application/x-bibtex" "https://doi.org/<doi>" gives publisher BibTeX. Cross-check title and year against https://api.crossref.org/works/<doi>.
   • arXiv id: curl -s "http://export.arxiv.org/api/query?id_list=<id>" and build a @misc (or @article with journal = {arXiv preprint arXiv:<id>}) with eprint, archivePrefix = {arXiv}, primaryClass. If the paper was later published, prefer the published DOI and keep the arXiv id in eprint.
   • Title only: https://api.crossref.org/works?query.bibliographic=<title>&rows=3, confirm the top hit's title matches before taking its DOI; if it does not, tell the student rather than guessing.
2. Normalise the key to <firstauthorsurname><year><firstsignificanttitleword>, lowercase ASCII (smith2023feedback). Collisions get a letter suffix (smith2023feedbacka). Keep the student's existing key convention if the file already has one.
3. Clean the fields. Read reference/fields.md. In short: protect capitals in titles with braces ({LLM}, {Python}), use and between authors, ISO-free year/month, doi without the https://doi.org/ prefix, url only when there is no DOI, no abstract or keywords noise unless the student wants them, page ranges with --.
4. Choose the entry type from the source, not the venue name: @inproceedings for conference papers (with booktitle), @article for journals (journal, volume, number, pages), @book, @incollection, @phdthesis, @techreport, @misc for preprints and web pages (howpublished, note = {Accessed YYYY-MM-DD}).
5. Append to the .bib (default references.bib or the path in the thesis config), keeping the file sorted by key if it already is.

Clean an existing file

Run these checks and report before changing anything:

• Duplicate DOIs or near-duplicate titles (normalised, first 60 chars): merge, keep the richest entry, note which key was removed so the text can be updated.
• Keys that do not match the convention: propose renames; apply only with --rename, and then update every \cite/[@…] in the source files the student names.
• Missing required fields per type (see the reference): list them; fetch from CrossRef when a DOI is present.
• Unprotected capitals in titles, & unescaped in booktitle, pages with a single hyphen, month as a number in quotes.
• Entries with no DOI, arXiv id, or URL: flag as unverifiable so citation-verifier can chase them.

From a reading list

Given reading-list.md from literature-search, add every entry via step 1 using its DOI or arXiv id, and write a mapping key -> title at the end of the reply so paper-reader notes can use the same keys.

Zotero and Word

When the thesis is written in Word with Zotero:

• Import the .bib into Zotero (File → Import) or install Better BibTeX and set the .bib as an auto-export of the thesis collection, so the file remains the source of truth and Zotero is the view.
• Match Better BibTeX's key pattern to the convention above (auth.lower + year + shorttitle(1,1).lower) so keys are identical in both worlds.
• Never edit an entry only in Zotero; fix the .bib and re-import.

Rules

• No entry without an identifier that resolved today. If the student insists on an unresolvable source (a lecture, an internal report), it goes in as @misc with a note explaining the provenance, and is listed in the reply as unverified.
• Never delete an entry without saying which citations in the text will break.
• Preserve the student's manual field additions (annote, file) when rewriting an entry.