RIS File Validator
Paste or upload a .ris export from a database or a reference manager. Every record is checked — tag lines, TY and ER, unknown tags, missing fields, duplicates and encoding — the safe fixes are made for you, and you get a report of every change and a clean .ris file to import. It all happens in your browser.
Paste the file's text or upload the .ris file. It is checked and cleaned in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
Paste or upload a RIS file to check it.
How to Use the RIS File Validator
- 1. Add the file. Paste its text, or upload the .ris file. An upload that is not valid UTF-8 is read as Windows-1252, the character set older exporters write, and the page tells you so.
- 2. Read the report. Each problem is listed with its record and line, marked Error, Warning or Note, and labelled when the cleaned file already fixes it.
- 3. Choose the fixes. Four repairs are on by default: tag lines, missing ER lines, full journal titles in JO, and exact duplicates. Untick any you would rather make yourself.
- 4. Download the cleaned file and import it into Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley or JabRef. Download the report too if you want a record of what changed.
The Shape of a Valid RIS Record
RIS is the tagged text format Research Information Systems created for Reference Manager. Its rules are set out in the "RIS" Format Documentation that Thomson Reuters published for EndNote and Reference Manager, and they are short:
- Each line starts with a six-character tag: an upper-case letter, an upper-case letter or a digit, two spaces, a hyphen and a space, then the value — as in the record below.
- TY comes first and ER last in every record. TY gives the reference type, such as
JOUR,BOOKorCHAP; ER closes the record and carries no value. - One person per author line, surname first: Light, Janice.
- PY is the four-digit year. A full date goes in DA as YYYY/MM/DD.
- Lines end in CR LF, and a long value may wrap onto the line below.
- The journal's name goes in T2 and its abbreviation in J2 — not in JO, which Zotero reads as the abbreviation.
A valid JOUR record
TY - JOUR AU - Light, Janice AU - McNaughton, David TI - From basic to applied research to improve outcomes for individuals who require augmentative and alternative communication: Potential contributions of eye tracking research methods T2 - Augmentative and Alternative Communication J2 - Augment Altern Commun PY - 2014 VL - 30 IS - 2 SP - 99 EP - 105 DO - 10.3109/07434618.2014.906498 ER -
What the Validator Checks
| Check | What it catches |
|---|---|
| Tag lines | One space or three before the hyphen, a tab, an en dash for the hyphen, an indent. Zotero reads one space, but joins a line with three, or with no space after the hyphen, to the field above. |
| TY and ER | A record with no TY or no ER, and a TY that is not a RIS type, such as ARTICLE or jour. Zotero imports a missing or unknown type as a journal article; the RIS documentation says EndNote imports it as Generic. |
| Unknown tags | Tags in neither the current specification nor Reference Manager's older one, such as PU for a publisher. Zotero drops them. |
| Missing fields | A JOUR with no title, author, journal or year, a BOOK with no publisher — see below. |
| Duplicates | Exact repeats of an earlier record, and likely duplicates: the same DOI, or the same title, year and first author. |
| Encoding | A byte-order mark mid-file, mojibake such as é for é, and the replacement character � where a letter was lost. |
| Tag misuse | A full journal title in JO, a JO that repeats T2, several authors on one AU line, a date with no four-digit year. |
RIS itself requires only TY and ER, so "missing" means missing for a citation. JOUR, EJOUR and ABST records need a title, an author, a journal and a year; BOOK, EBOOK and EDBOOK a title, an author or editor, a year and a publisher; CHAP and ECHAP a title, an author, a book title and a year; CPAPER a conference name too; THES a university in PB; ELEC, WEB and BLOG a title and a URL. Any other type needs a title.
One Record, Three Problems
As pasted
TY - JOUR AU - Aspelmeyer, Markus TI - Measured measurement JO - Nature Physics PY - 2009 VL - 5 IS - 1 SP - 11 EP - 12 DO - 10.1038/nphys1170
- Line 1, error: the TY line has one space before the hyphen instead of two. The fix adds the second space.
- Line 4, warning: JO holds the full title Nature Physics, which Zotero would file as the journal's abbreviation. The fix retags the line as T2.
- Line 10, error: the record has no ER line. The fix adds one after the DOI.
Pasted from this page, it also gets a note that its lines end in LF, as text copied from a browser does; the cleaned file ends them in CR LF.
Cleaned
TY - JOUR AU - Aspelmeyer, Markus TI - Measured measurement T2 - Nature Physics PY - 2009 VL - 5 IS - 1 SP - 11 EP - 12 DO - 10.1038/nphys1170 ER -
Reported, not repaired
A missing TY, an unknown tag, a likely duplicate, a missing field and mojibake each need a decision only you can make, so the validator reports them and leaves the text alone. Values are never rewritten or reordered. For mojibake, export the file again as UTF-8 rather than correcting the letters one by one.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is a RIS file?
- A plain-text file of references in the RIS tagged format, with the extension .ris. Scopus, Web of Science, JSTOR and Google Scholar export it, and Zotero, EndNote, Mendeley and JabRef all import it. Each reference is a block of tagged lines that opens with TY and closes with ER.
- Why won't my RIS file import?
- Most often because a record does not start with a valid TY line — the tag is missing, misspaced or names a type the program does not know — or because the file is not in the encoding the program expects. Paste it above: the report points to the record and line, and the cleaned file repairs tag lines and closes unfinished records.
- What is the difference between T2, JF, JO and J2?
- All of them can hold a journal's name. In the current specification T2 is the journal for a journal article and J2 its abbreviation. JF (the full name) and JO and JA (abbreviations) belong to Reference Manager's older tag set. Zotero reads JO as the abbreviation, so a full title written there is filed as one — put it in T2.
- How do I remove duplicates from a RIS file?
- Leave the exact-duplicate fix ticked and download the cleaned file. Likely duplicates — the same DOI, or the same title, year and first author — are reported but kept, because only you can tell which copy is better; delete one, or merge them after import with your reference manager's duplicate finder.
- What encoding should a RIS file use?
- UTF-8: Zotero exports in it and current reference managers read it. The original specification limits text to the ANSI (Windows-1252) character set, which is why accented names in an old export turn into mojibake when the file is read as UTF-8. The validator reads a file that is not valid UTF-8 as Windows-1252 and saves the cleaned copy as UTF-8.
- Does the validator change my references?
- Only through the four fixes, each listed in the report with the line before and after. Untick a fix and that part of the file stays exactly as it was; with all four off, the cleaned file is identical to yours.