CSL-JSON
Also called: citeproc JSON
The JSON representation of a reference used internally by CSL citation engines, and the most faithful format for moving citations between tools.
A CSL-JSON record is an object with a type, structured names, and structured dates: authors as family/given pairs rather than a single string, dates as date-parts arrays rather than free text. That structure is what lets an engine invert a name for one style and not another, or print a date as “2024, May 14” in APA and “14 May 2024” in Harvard.
It loses less than BibTeX or RIS because it is the format the formatter actually consumes — no parsing step in between. If you are building anything programmatic around citations, this is the shape to hold them in.
Do it on CitationEasy
See also
CSL (Citation Style Language)An open XML format for describing how a citation style formats references, used by Zotero, Mendeley, Paperpile, and this site.BibTeXThe reference format used with LaTeX, storing each source as a typed record of field–value pairs in a .bib file.RISA plain-text reference interchange format using two-letter tags, exported by most databases and read by most reference managers.