BibTeX beautifier

Beautify BibTeX files in the following way:

• main feature: replaces entries using the ones from the ACM Digital Library (ACM DL) when they exist, otherwise keeps the original entry. It uses the entry DOI when it is available, otherwise it searches for the DOI using CrossRef API.
• removes the fields specified by the user from the entries.
• indents the entries in a consistent way.
• removes unnecessary line breaks between the entries.

It preserves the original order of the entries in the BibTeX file and it also preserves the original BibTeX key of the entries.

Installation

pip install bibb

You also need to have Google Chrome and node.js installed and available in your PATH.

In Node.js, you need to install the citeproc package:

npm install citeproc

Usage

In order to use the ACM DL feature, you need to have Google Chrome installed, and you need to start it with the remote debugging port enabled. You can do this by running the following command in a terminal (replace with the path to your Google Chrome installation if it is different):

/Applications/Google\ Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google\ Chrome --remote-debugging-port=9222 -user-data-dir="./ChromeProfile"

Navigate to the https://dl.acm.org/ website in the Chrome window that opens (allows to validate the Cloudflare protection), and then you can run the bibb command in another terminal.

bibb -i input.bib -o output.bib

To remove specific fields from the output BibTeX entries, you can use the --fieldsToRemove option followed by a comma-separated list of fields to remove. For example, to remove the keywords and abstract fields, you can run:

bibb -i input.bib -o output.bib --fieldsToRemove keywords,abstract

Important: This tool is still under development. Run a diff between the input and output files to check for any unexpected changes.