cb2Bib is another tool useful mainly for scientists, but it is also usable for students and all users who deal with large amounts of digitized data. It is a tool for rapidly extracting bibliographic references from email alerts, journal web pages, and PDF files. It facilitates the capture of single references from unformatted and non standard sources.

Output references are written in BibTeX. Article files can be easily linked and renamed by dragging it onto the cb2Bib window. The cb2Bib permits editing and browsing BibTeX files, searching references and the contents of linked files, and cite them into document editors.

The application runs in Unix/Linux and Windows and requires Qt 4.2.0 or higher from Trolltech. cb2Bib versions 0.6 and older require Qt 3.2.

Here are some tips on using cb2Bib: Select the reference to import from the email or web browser. Once text is selected cb2Bib initiates the automatic reference extraction. It uses the predefined patterns from file regexp.txt to attempt automatic extraction.

If no predefined format pattern is found or if detection proves to be difficult, a manual data extraction must be performed. Select individual reference items from the cb2Bib clipboard area. A popup menu will appear after selection is made. Choose the corresponding bibliographic field.

PDF or PS documents can be added to the BibTeX reference by dragging the file icon and dropping it into the cb2Bib’s panel. Multiple PDF or convertible to text files can be sequentially processed by dragging a set of files into cb2Bib’s PDFImport dialog.

More info is available at the cb2Bib homepage.