Working with academic references in Google Docs

We are still hoping for an era where citation management software would be free, interoperable, easy to use and nicely integrated with word processing tools.

Until this dream comes true, we need practical solutions. BibTeX is a standard format used by most citation managing systems and initially designed to work with LaTeX. Working with LaTeX allows multiple users to jointly work on a same manuscript using a version control system e.g git. In line with this, LaTeX writers may now opt for several recently emerged online real-time editing platforms (Overleaf), allowing to collaborate on the source and instantly visualize the compiled result. In parallel, other tools such as (Open/Libre/Microsoft) Office have seen developing plugins to allow inserting references from BibTeX (or other) files, offering a popular alternative for non-LaTeX non-git users.

Finally, Google Docs users do not have much option here, as the only existing plugin to work with references in Google Docs comes as a paid service with Paperpile. Hence this post describes a kind of recipe intended for Google Docs users wanting to work with BibTeX references in a shared document.

Consider for example a document including BibTeX reference ID (here preceded by @, as in @Author2019). By taking as inputs the document ID and a BibTeX bibliography source file featuring the cited references, this technique will generate a copy of the document having all reference ID replaced by, either a reference number or a mention such as First Author et al. (2019). It will also compile a full list of the used references to get included e.g. at the end of the document.

The core idea is based on making calls to the Google API from a Python app to apply the right changes to the document. Getting started takes 3 steps:

• download the Python app/script
• enable the Google API and obtain client credentials
• look up the ID of a document and pass it to the app along with the corresponding .bib file.

The app will generate a copy of the document with initial reference ID replaced by their full version as given by the .bib file.

bibtex2docs.py DOCUMENT_ID BIBTEX_FILE CREDENTIALS

More information at http://gitlab.com/xgrg/bibtex2docs.

Install with pip install bibtex2docs .