Exporting the data

You can export the citation data from Publish or Perish to the following formats:

• BibTeX - a generally used format for bibliographic references, based on the TeX typesetting program and LaTeX macros.
• CSV - a comma-separated values format accepted by most databases and spreadsheets.
• EndNote Import - a data exchange format for use with the EndNote program from Thomson ResearchSoft.
• RIS - a data exchange format used by a variety of reference managers, including Reference Manager.

The general procedure is as follows:

1. In the results pane, check the citation lines that you want to export. By default, all lines are checked and thus exported.
2. If desired, click on the column headers to sort the data in the desired order. The sort is stable, which means that you can sort by multiple columns by clicking them in succession, but in reverse order. (For example, to sort primarily by author, secondary by year, and tertiary by publication, click on Publication, then on Year, then on Authors.)
3. Choose File > Save As xxx from the main menu, where 'xxx' is the desired export format.

Below are the details of each format as Publish or Perish implements them. This is for reference only; in general you do not need to know these details if you are exchanging the data with other software that recognises at least one of these formats.

BibTeX format details

The BibTeX format is defined in a variety of locations with varying level of detail; we have used BibTeX.org and Wikipedia.

Publish or Perish writes all BibTeX format files as plain text Unicode files, encoded as UTF-8 with the UTF-8 BOM (0xEF 0xBB 0xBF) at the start of the file. As of Publish or Perish version 2.2, if a field contains embedded '\' or '&' characters, they are escaped by prefixing them with another '\' to avoid misinterpretation as commands or control codes.

For each citation entry, Publish or Perish creates one of the following BibTeX entries:

For each BibTeX entry, Publish or Perish generates a citation key in the format popxxxx and then uses the following subset of the available BibTeX tags:

CSV format details

The CSV format is a defacto format defined by various sources; see for example this Wikipedia entry. Publish or Perish applies all required transformations: quotes around fields that contain embedded spaces, quote doubling for fields with embedded quotes, etc.

Publish or Perish writes all CSV format files as plain text Unicode files, encoded as UTF-8 with the UTF-8 BOM (0xEF 0xBB 0xBF) at the start of the file. The first line in the file lists the fields; the remaining lines contain the citation entries, one per line. Missing fields result in an empty CSV field "". The following field names are used:

EndNote Import format details

The EndNote Import data exchange format is defined by Thomson ResearchSoft for use by its EndNote program, among others; the format specification can be found in the help file of EndNote itself.

Publish or Perish writes all EndNote Import format files as plain text Unicode files, encoded as UTF-8 with the UTF-8 BOM (0xEF 0xBB 0xBF) at the start of the file. It uses the following subset of the available EndNote Import tags:

RIS format details

The RIS data exchange format is defined by Thomson ResearchSoft for use by its Reference Manager and EndNote programs, among others; their web site contains the official definition.

Publish or Perish writes all RIS format files as plain text Unicode files, encoded as UTF-8 with the UTF-8 BOM (0xEF 0xBB 0xBF) at the start of the file. It uses the following subset of the available RIS tags: