PubMed to BibTeX Converter
Paste PubMed IDs — PMIDs, PMCIDs or PubMed links — and get BibTeX @article entries: authors, title, journal, volume, issue, pages, DOI and the PMID, built from PubMed's own record. Write journal names as NLM abbreviations or in full, and put the PMID where your style expects it. Free, no sign-up.
Bare numbers, PMID: labels, PMC IDs and PubMed or PMC links all work. Up to 25 per run.
Paste at least one PMID or PMCID, then convert.
How to Use the PubMed to BibTeX Converter
- 1. Paste the IDs. One per line, up to 25: a bare PMID (
29083010),PMID: 29083010, a PMCID (PMC5334499), or a PubMed or PMC link. - 2. Choose the journal form and the PMID field. NLM abbreviations suit Vancouver, AMA and most biomedical journals; full titles suit APA and Chicago. Pick where the PubMed ID goes — see the table below.
- 3. Convert. Each record is fetched in turn and listed with its title, or with the reason it could not be found.
- 4. Copy or download the entries as
references.bib. The options apply instantly, so you can switch the journal form after converting.
A PubMed Record as BibTeX
This is the entry the converter writes for PMID 29083010, an article in Dalton Transactions, with the default options:
BibTeX output for PMID 29083010
@article{gao2017cyclometalated,
author = {Gao, Tai-Bao and Qu, Zhong-Ze and Tang, Zhe and Cao, Deng-Ke},
title = {Cyclometalated Ir(iii) complexes incorporating a photoactive anthracene-based ligand: syntheses, crystal structures and luminescence switching by light irradiation},
journal = {Dalton Trans},
year = {2017},
month = nov,
volume = {46},
number = {44},
pages = {15443--15450},
doi = {10.1039/c7dt02967e},
pmid = {29083010}
}- journal — PubMed records the full NLM title, Dalton transactions (Cambridge, England : 2003). The converter looks it up in NLM's journal list and writes the abbreviation, Dalton Trans, or — with full titles chosen — the title without NLM's place-and-date qualifier. NLM writes titles in sentence case, so capitalise a full title if your style needs it.
- title — PubMed's title without its closing full stop: MEDLINE ends every title with one, and BibTeX styles add their own.
- month — BibTeX's month macro,
nov, written without braces so every style can print or abbreviate it. - pages — with BibTeX's en dash,
--. A range MEDLINE shortens, such as 1123-9, is written out in full as 1123--1129.
Where to Put the PMID
BibTeX has no standard field for a PubMed ID, so three conventions are in use, and the converter offers all of them:
| Option | Written as | Choose it when |
|---|---|---|
| pmid field | pmid = {29083010} | Your reference manager reads it — JabRef, BibDesk and Zotero's Better BibTeX all do. Standard styles ignore unknown fields, so nothing extra is printed. |
| note | note = {PMID: 29083010} | The PMID must appear in the printed reference, as many biomedical journals ask. |
| biblatex eprint | eprint = {29083010} and eprinttype = {pubmed} | You use biblatex, which prints the ID as "PMID: 29083010" with a link to PubMed. |
A PMCID such as PMC5334499 numbers the free full text in PubMed Central, not the PubMed record, and the lookup returns no PMID for it. Paste the PMID instead if you want one in the entry; otherwise the converter writes pmcid = {PMC5334499} — biblatex has no eprint type for PMCIDs, so the eprint option falls back to that field too.
Check two-word surnames
Names reach the converter as single strings, so a surname of two words is split on its last word. NLM lists one author of PMID 33301246 as Pérez Marc, Gonzalo; the entry will say Marc, Gonzalo Pérez until you correct it. Group authors such as that trial's C4591001 Clinical Trial Group are recognised and kept whole in double braces.
Where the data comes from. The IDs go to CitationEasy's own lookup service, which fetches each record from the National Library of Medicine's citation exporter for PubMed and PubMed Central. With NLM abbreviations chosen, your browser also downloads NLM's journal list from this site once — the same list the Journal Abbreviation Finder searches.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How do I convert a PMID to BibTeX?
- Paste the PMID — or a list of them, one per line — into the box above and press Convert to BibTeX. Each ID is looked up in PubMed and written as an @article entry with the authors, title, journal, year, volume, issue, pages, DOI and PMID, ready to copy or download as a .bib file.
- What is the difference between a PMID and a PMCID?
- A PMID numbers the citation record in PubMed, and every article indexed there has one — 29083010, for example. A PMCID such as PMC5334499 numbers the free full-text copy in PubMed Central, so only articles deposited there have one. They are different numbers for the same article, and the converter accepts both.
- Should I use the journal abbreviation or the full title?
- Follow your style. Vancouver, AMA and most biomedical journals use NLM abbreviations such as N Engl J Med; APA and Chicago spell journal titles out. BibTeX prints the journal field exactly as written, so pick the form your style needs before you copy the entries.
- Does BibTeX have a PMID field?
- Not in the standard styles — an unknown field such as pmid is ignored when the bibliography is typeset. It is still worth keeping, because reference managers and some journal styles read it. If the PMID must appear in print, put it in note instead.
- Why does a PMID return no record?
- Check the number first: PMIDs are up to eight digits and are easily confused with a PMCID or a page number. If the number is right, PubMed may be slow or briefly unavailable — try again later, or convert the article's DOI with the DOI to BibTeX converter.
- Can I convert a whole PubMed search?
- Up to 25 IDs per run. For a larger result set, use PubMed's Send to → Citation manager, which saves a .nbib file in MEDLINE format; Zotero and JabRef import it and can export the records as BibTeX.