BibTeX with Endnote: Leveraging Endnote Tools for LaTeX Users

BibTeX Manages All of Your Citation Details for Use in All Your LaTeX Documents:

BibTeX is a helper program that allows you to create, manage, and use a single citation database with many LaTeX documents.  This allows you to maintain a single source from which you can use and reuse the citation data you collect. 

BibTex files are saved with the ".bib" extension.

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LaTeX Bibliography Creation Using BibTeX: Overview

Bibliography creation uses the BibTeX program and an associated ".bib" file and the LaTeX program along with a specific ".tex" document file and involves the following general steps:

1. Create a BibTeX file containing the bibliographic information for sources you will cite in any document you will create.  Each item description is defined by a unique, short name (or "KEY" in LaTeX/BibTeX speak) and contains all of the necessary bits of description for the item type.  For example a book would contain the author name, book title, publisher and publication year.  A journal article might contain the author, the article title, the journal title, volume, issue, pages, publication month and publication year.
2. In the text body of the LaTeX file, cite each source at the appropriate location(s) within the text body using the KEY name defined in the .bib BibTeX library.
3. In the LaTeX file, define a bibliography style and indicate which BibTeX library file to use.
4. Typeset your document to create a formatted and printable document complete with bibliography.

noodlebib NoodleBib LaTeX bibliography BibTeX

LaTeX Bibliography Creation Using BibTeX: Nuts and Bolts

Details for bibliography creation using BibTeX can be found in pages 179-187 of LaTeX Beginner's Guide (2011)¹. 

The Hardware:

Like manual bibliography creation in LaTeX, a good way to think about using BibTex with LaTeX to create bibliographies for your LaTeX documents is that you are working in two different but related environments.  However, in this case the two environments are located in two different files.

• The BibTeX ".bib" file which contains the bibliographic details for your references.

The BibTeX file is a list of all the fields necessary for creating properly formatted in-text and bibliography citations.

Each item includes a content type (i.e. book, article, etc), the unique item KEY name and all the bibliographic details necessary to create a complete bibliography entry (i.e. Author, title, journal, volume, number, pages, month, year, etc.). 

The format for a BibTeX database entry is:

Where:

entrytype corresponds to the type of work being cited (e.g. book, article, etc.)

keyword corresponds to the short, unique identifier for the citation entry

fieldname 1 ... n = the citation fields (e.g. title, author, journal, volume, etc.)  for a given citation type 

For lists of common entry types and their respective fields, see:

• A table of common BibTeX entry TYPES (e.g. book, article, etc.).
• A table of common BibTeX source FIELDS (e.g. title, author, publisher, etc.).

• The LaTeX  ".tex" file which contains the elements of the text body including in-text citations.  The .tex file also defines the use of a specific bibliography style and BibTeX library.

In-text citations are indicated using the \cite{KEY} command, where KEY is the short, unique identifier for an individual citation.

A BibTeX database .bib file is indicated with the \bibliography{filename} command.

Hardware Assembly: Putting it all together

• Creating the .bib file

Create the ".bib" file using a  simple text editor.  When saving the file, be sure that the "all file types" option is selected and include the ".bib" file extension as part of the name (e.g. "libguide.bib").  Save the .bib file in the same directory you use for your .tex files.

Here's an example with information for three Bates faculty publications:

• Creating the .tex file

Use PCTeX (or similar software) to create a .tex file containing your document text and citations to sources.

Here's an example saved as libguide.tex that makes use of the libguide.bib file created above:

• Typesetting a document containing your text with citations and bibliography

1. With the .bib file saved in the same directory as your .tex file, use PCTeX to open your .tex file (e.g. libguide.tex).
2. From the PCTeX drop down menu select Tools→Bibliography.
3. Next, typeset your .tex file.
4. You will be prompted to typeset your .tex file a second time.  Do this to create your final document (including bibliography).
5. Using the examples above, your final document should look like this:

[1] Kottwitz, Stefan. 2011. LaTeX beginner's guide: Create high-quality and professional-looking texts, articles, and books for business and science using LaTeX. Olton, Birmingham: Packt Pub

noodlebib NoodleBib LaTeX bibliography

Manage Citations with EndNote and Export Multiple Citations to a .Bib File:

Using the \cite{KEY}, \bibliography{filename.bib} and \bibliographystyle{stylename} commands in a LaTeX .tex document, it's possible to specify in-text citations and create a formatted bibliography from a BibTeX .bib citation database file.  Because you can use the same .bib citation library for many .tex documents, this alleviates the need to repeat citation information entries for each .tex file.

However, hand creating individual entries for a citation list in a .bib library can be a time consuming drag.  Fortunately, we can use a robust citation management program (EndNote) to do most of the heavy lifting.

BibTeX .bib file Creation Using Using EndNote: Overview

Creating a .bib file using EndNote and a simple text editor involves the following general steps:

1. Use EndNote to build a giant citation library.  If you use both LaTeX and Microsoft Word, so much the better, because EndNote works very well with MS Word.
2. Select all sources from your EndNote library you would like to export into a .bib file.
3. Export to a .txt file and then change the extension from .txt to .bib.  Or copy/paste the contents of the .txt file into a new .bib file, if you find that easier.
4. Delete any fields from EndNote that you would prefer not to have in your final bibliography.

BibTeX .bib file Creation Using Using EndNote X8 or EndNote X9: Nuts and Bolts

• Create an intermediate text (i.e. .txt) file:

1.  Open your the EndNote library of interest in EndNote X8 or EndNote X9  (ENX8 / ENX9).

2.  In the ENX8 / ENX9 main tool bar, if "BibTex Output Style" is not listed in the drop down menu for the active citation output style, choose "Select Another Style".

3.  From the "Choose a Style" dialog box, select the "BibTex Export" style:

4.  Note that the ENX8 / ENX9 preview window displays each citation in the BibTex format.

5.  Select the citations of interest.  If there are many, it is a good idea to create a sub-folder containing the desired citations.  Then select everything in that group.

6.  From the ENX8 / ENX9 drop down menu, select File→Export.

7.  In the Export file name dialog box:

• Provide a file name
• Save as type .txt
• Select the BibTex Export style
• Select the "Export Selected References" box

• Creating and Editing the .bib file:

1.  After creating the .txt file, rename the file to replace the ".txt" extension with ".bib".  Alternatively, you can just copy the contents of the .txt file and paste them into a new .bib file.

2.  Open the new .bib file with either you LaTeX envirinment (e.g. Overleaf) or a simple text editor.  You will note:

• many of your exported records will have unwanted extraneous information.  Because each of these fields in the .bib file can wind up in a .tex bibliography, you should delete unwanted fields from each .bib entry.
• Save the edited .bib file.  You are done!

Here's a table of Source FIELDS (e.g. title, author, publisher, etc.) used when creating an item in a BibTeX citation database.