Add a Whole Bibliography to Your CiteTools List

Finding out your paper needs Chicago instead of APA the night before it’s due, with forty citations already formatted the wrong way, is one of the more specific kinds of academic panic. Retyping each entry is slow and error-prone at that volume. The CiteTools reference list takes the whole bibliography in one paste and formats it in the style you pick. Here is how that works, and what to do at the limits.

For converting a single citation, or the basics of reading the result, see how to convert citations between styles. This post covers the long list.

How a Pasted List Is Split

Paste several references into the source box and CiteTools splits the paste the way reference lists are usually written:

One reference per line. A single-spaced list is read line by line when most lines read as a reference on their own.
A blank line between references. A blank line always separates two entries, which is what you want when a copy from a PDF wrapped each reference over several lines.
A numbered list. Leading numbers such as 1. or [1] are dropped.
A list of identifiers. DOIs on separate lines, or several on one line, each become an entry.

A DOI or PubMed id on the line under its reference stays with that reference. When the lines of a block do not read as references, such as loose notes with a surname and a year, CiteTools keeps the block together instead of guessing where one source ends.

While you type or paste, small badges beside the “Add a source” label show what the box holds, such as “DOI”, “Reference” or “BibTeX”. They name the kinds of input found, not a count of references.

A Worked Example

Say you copied this from a Word document, single-spaced with no gaps:

LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y., & Hinton, G. (2015). Deep learning. Nature, 521(7553), 436-444. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539 Vaswani, A., et al. Attention is all you need. 2017.

Pasted as it is, CiteTools reads two references. The DOI line stays with the first one. In an empty list, the header then reads “My references (2)”.

If a list splits in the wrong place, the usual cause is a reference that wrapped onto a second line. Put a blank line between the references and paste again:

LeCun, Y., Bengio, Y., & Hinton, G. (2015). Deep learning. Nature, 521(7553), 436-444. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539
Vaswani, A., et al. Attention is all you need. 2017.

Adding the List

Paste your bibliography into the source box. In an empty box the paste is added at once. Otherwise select “Add to list” or press Enter.
Pick your target style from the citation style menu. The whole list is formatted again in that style, so you can try APA, then Chicago, without pasting twice.
Read each row. A badge says how the row was reached: Confirmed, As written, Not confirmed, or From the page. A row that a record corrected lists the changes under the citation, such as “Corrected from the record: year 2014 to 2015”. For what each label means, see the tool methodology.
Select “Copy all” to copy the formatted list with its italics into Word or Google Docs.
To save the list in another form, open the menu beside the Copy button and choose from “Download as...”: Plain Text, BibTeX, RIS, Microsoft Word, Rich Text, LaTeX or PDF Document. For BibTeX and LaTeX, see exporting citations to BibTeX, Word, and LaTeX.

Rows are numbered only in the numbered styles: IEEE, Vancouver, AMA and ACS. The other styles show no numbers, and the list is sorted A to Z where the style requires it.

The 100-Reference Limit

One paste adds up to 100 references, and the list holds 500. If you paste more than 100, CiteTools adds the first 100. The rest do not disappear. The message “One paste adds up to 100 references. Paste the rest again.” appears under the box. Each leftover reference appears below it as a card, under the heading “N sources were not added”.

Select “Put them all back” to return those lines to the box, then add them. With one leftover reference there is no heading, and its card offers “Put it back in the box”. A doctoral dissertation’s bibliography of 150 sources is two pastes into one list. A bibliography past 500 needs a second list: open the menu beside the Copy button, select “Download the list file” to keep the first, then start a new list.

When a Line Fails

A failed line does not stop the rest. If 38 of 40 references are added and two fail, you have 38 finished rows and two cards. Each card shows the text that was not added, with two actions:

Put it back in the box returns that text to the source box so you can fix it and add it again.
Dismiss removes the card.

Read the message before you retry. Most cards say what is missing: add the DOI if you have it, or complete the author and year. “Try again in a moment” on a card is worth one retry. When the line under the box reads “Too many requests. Wait one minute and try again.”, wait a minute, then select “Put them all back”. Lines of a long paste that were not yet sent come back as cards.

Getting Better Results

A list works best when each entry is reasonably complete on its own: a full reference, a DOI or a URL, rather than a bare title with no author or date. Mixing kinds within one paste is fine. A list with some DOIs, some references copied from another paper and a couple of URLs is added as long as each line can identify its source. A shorthand only you would recognize gives the lookup nothing to work with.

A title on its own is the exception. Pasted alone, it is searched: CiteTools shows a short list headed “Which one do you mean?” and you pick the work. Pasted among other lines, it comes back as a card that asks for the author and year.

When the List Tool Isn’t the Right Tool

If you are managing an active research library rather than reformatting a finished reference list, a reference manager like Zotero or Mendeley does a different job: tracking PDFs, syncing across devices, and inserting in-text citations as you write. The reference list here is for the moment you need a whole bibliography in the right style. Our comparison of Zotero, Mendeley, and CiteTools covers where each tool fits.

The same paste limits apply whatever the document is. If you are finalizing citations for a personal statement or a writing sample, see citations in personal statements and writing samples for what differs in those documents.

For what else CiteTools reads, checks and exports, see the About page.

Try It with CiteTools

A reference list that needs reformatting doesn’t have to go one citation at a time. Paste the whole list into CiteTools.io, pick your target style, and copy the result.