Introduction
bib-ami is a command-line utility for improving the integrity of
BibTeX (.bib) bibliographies. It is designed to help researchers,
academics, and students by automating several common data cleaning
tasks.
Managing bibliographies often involves dealing with duplicate entries,
inconsistent formatting, and missing metadata. bib-ami addresses
these issues by providing functionality to merge multiple .bib
files, identify and remove duplicate entries, and validate or find
missing Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) by querying the CrossRef API.
The goal is to produce a consolidated and more reliable BibTeX file,
reducing the manual effort required to manage academic references.
Getting Started
This section is designed to get you up and running with bib-ami in under five minutes.
Installation
bib-ami is distributed via the Python Package Index (PyPI) and can
be installed easily using pip. Ensure you have Python 3.7 or higher
installed.
pip install bib-ami
This command will also install all necessary dependencies, including
bibtexparser, requests, and fuzzywuzzy.
Quick Start Example
The fastest way to see bib-ami in action is to run it on a directory
of your existing .bib files. This single command will merge all
found files, deduplicate the entries, attempt to find missing DOIs, and
save the result to a new, clean file.
Create a directory (e.g.,
my_bib_files) and place all your source.bibfiles inside it.Create a second directory for the output (e.g.,
output).Run the following command from your terminal, making sure to provide your email address. An email is required for responsible use of the CrossRef API’s Polite Pool.
bib-ami --input-dir my_bib_files --output-file output/cleaned_library.bib --email "your.name@university.edu"
After the process completes, you will find a cleaned_library.bib
file in your output directory. This file contains the consolidated
and enhanced collection of your references. A summary of the actions
taken (e.g., duplicates removed, DOIs added) will be printed to your
console.