Using JabRef with Word 2007 to manage bibliography

Using JabRef with Word 2007 to manage bibliography

While many people prefer LaTex + Bibtex when writing technical reports (papers, theses, books even slides), there are some circumstances under which you "have to" use Word. Personally I like its grammar checking (not perfect but good for correcting typos) and the ability to manipulate figures. One of the big problems when using Word is the citation (reference) management. Normally we keep our bibliography collection in some .bib files and we really want to use this resource. There are some methods out there such as converting the bibtex file to EndNote (a popular reference management software working nicely with Word) library file (see here and here) , and then using those added-on buttons on the Word toolbar to insert citations and manage the reference list. While it is not elegant but works. I don’t want to use EndNote though, because its library is not the native bibtex format (and it is not free!). For the same reason I use Jabref, which is an open source, multi-platform, and bibtex formatted reference management software. So ideally, I want to use JabRef from inside the Word environment to manage citations and at the same time, keep my bib collection in native bibtex format (after all, LaTex is my main tool). Well this will never happen. But there is an alternative way. The Word 2007 has a nice build-in “Citations & Bibliography” module which is simple and straight-forward. Even better, the library file (source) is an xml file (although in a specific format). Using this tool, you can convert bibtex format to an intermediate MODS (Library of Congress's Metadata Object Description Schema) format, and then convert the MODS to Word 2007 xml format. Only 2 lines of command will do the job. Then use the xml as a source and you are ready to go.

Step by step instruction:

1. Download the bibutils package from this website.
2. Unpack to some directory, you will get some .exe files.
3. Using command line to do the conversion. Eg:
   
• bib2xml original_file.bib > MODS_file.xml
• xml2word MODS_file.xml > Word2007_file.word.xml
4. Under Word 2007, Reference > Citations & Bibliography > Manage Source, select the Word2007_file.word.xml just generated.
5. Done. You can now insert citation by click “Insert Citation” and insert reference list by click “Bibliography”.