This feature offers an interface for inserting citations and formatting a Bibliography in an OpenOffice or LibreOffice Writer document from JabRef.
Throughout this help document, whenever the name OpenOffice is used, it can be interchanged with LibreOffice.
To communicate with OpenOffice, JabRef must first connect to a running OpenOffice instance. You need to start OpenOffice and enter your document before connecting from JabRef. JabRef needs to know the location of your OpenOffice executable (soffice.exe on Windows, and soffice on other platforms), and the directory where several OpenOffice jar files reside. If you connect by clicking the Connect button, JabRef will try to automatically determine these locations. If this does not work, you need to connect using the Manual connect button, which will open a window asking you for the needed locations.
After the connection has been established, you can insert citations by selecting one or more entries in JabRef and using the Push to OpenOffice button in the dropdown menu of JabRef's toolbar, or by using the appropriate button in the OpenOffice panel in the side pane. This will insert citations for the selected entries at the current cursor position in the OpenOffice document, and update the bibliography to contain the full reference.
Note: JabRef does not use OpenOffice's built-in bibliography system, because of the limitations of that system. A document containing citations inserted from JabRef will not generally be compatible with other reference managers such as Bibus and Zotero.
Two different types of citations can be inserted - either a citation in parenthesis, "(Author 2007)", or an in-text citation, "Author (2007)". This distinction is only meaningful if author-year citations are used instead of numbered citations, but the distinction will be preserved if you switch between the two styles.
If you modify entries in JabRef after inserting their citations into OpenOffice, you will need to synchronize the bibliography. The Sync OO bibliography button will update all entries of the bibliography, provided their BibTeX keys have not been altered (JabRef encodes the BibTeX key into the reference name for each citation to keep track of which BibTeX key the original JabRef entry has).
To customize the citation style you need to select a style file, or use one of the default styles. The style defines the format of citations and the format of the bibliography. You can use standard JabRef export formatters to process entry fields before they are sent to OpenOffice. Through the style file, the intention is to give as much flexibility in citation styles as possible. You can switch style files at any time, and use the Update button to refresh your bibliography to follow the new style.
By clicking the Select style button you can bring up a window that allows selection of either the default style or an external style file. If you want to create a new style based on the default, you can click the View button to bring up the default style contents, which can be copied into a text editor and modified.
To choose an external style file, you have two options. Either you can choose a style file directly, or you can set a style file directory. If you do the latter, you will see a list of styles from that directory (and subdirectories), and can choose one from that list.
Here is an example style file:
NAME Example style file for JabRef-OpenOffice integration. JOURNALS Journal name 1 Journal name 2 PROPERTIES Title="References" IsSortByPosition="false" IsNumberEntries="false" ReferenceParagraphFormat="Default" ReferenceHeaderParagraphFormat="Heading 1" CITATION AuthorField="author/editor" YearField="year" MaxAuthors="3" MaxAuthorsFirst="3" AuthorSeparator=", " AuthorLastSeparator=" & " EtAlString=" et al." ItalicEtAl="true" YearSeparator=" " InTextYearSeparator=" " BracketBefore="[" BracketAfter="]" BracketBeforeInList="[" BracketAfterInList="]" CitationSeparator="; " UniquefierSeparator="," GroupedNumbersSeparator="-" MinimumGroupingCount="3" FormatCitations="false" CitationCharacterFormat="Default" MultiCiteChronological="false" PageInfoSeparator="; " LAYOUT article=\format[AuthorLastFirst,AuthorAbbreviator,AuthorAndsReplacer]{\author} (<b>\year\uniq</b>). <i>\title</i>, \journal \volume\begin{pages} : \format[FormatPagesForHTML]{\pages}\end{pages}. book=\format[AuthorLastFirst,AuthorAbbreviator,AuthorAndsReplacer]{\author}\begin{editor} \format[AuthorLastFirst,AuthorAbbreviator,AuthorAndsReplacer]{\editor} (Ed.)\end{editor}, <b>\year\uniq</b>. <i>\title</i>. \publisher, \address. incollection=\format[AuthorLastFirst,AuthorAbbreviator,AuthorAndsReplacer]{\author} (<b>\year\uniq</b>). <i>\title</i>. In: \format[AuthorLastFirst, AuthorAbbreviator,AuthorAndsReplacer]{\editor} (Ed.), <i>\booktitle</i>, \publisher. inbook=\format[AuthorLastFirst,AuthorAbbreviator,AuthorAndsReplacer]{\author} (<b>\year\uniq</b>). <i>\chapter</i>. In: \format[AuthorLastFirst, AuthorAbbreviator,AuthorAndsReplacer]{\editor} (Ed.), <i>\title</i>, \publisher. phdthesis=\format[AuthorLastFirst,AuthorAbbreviator,AuthorAndsReplacer]{\author} (<b>\year\uniq</b>). <i>\title</i>, \school. default=\format[AuthorLastFirst,AuthorAbbreviator,AuthorAndsReplacer]{\author} (<b>\year\uniq</b>). <i>\title</i>, \journal \volume\begin{pages} : \format[FormatPagesForHTML]{\pages}\end{pages}.
(Note that the layout for each entry type must be constrained to a single line in the style file - above, the lines are broken up to improve readability.)
The PROPERTIES section describes global properties for the bibliography. The following table describes the available properties:
Property | Type | Default value | Description |
IsNumberEntries | boolean | false |
Determines the type of citations to use. If true , number citations will be
used. If false , author-year citations will be used.
|
IsSortByPosition | boolean | false |
Determines how the bibliography is sorted. If true, the entries will be sorted according to the order in which they are cited. If false, the entries will be sorted alphabetically by authors. |
ReferenceParagraphFormat | string | Default |
Gives the name of the paragraph format to be used for the reference list. This format must be defined in your OpenOffice document. |
ReferenceHeaderParagraphFormat | string | Heading 1 |
Gives the name of the paragraph format to be used for the headline of the reference list. This format must be defined in your OpenOffice document. |
Title | string | Bibliography |
The text to enter as the headline of the reference list. |
The CITATION section describes the format of the citation markers inserted into the text.
The following table gives a brief description of all the available citation properties. Properties that are not given in the style file will keep their default value.
Property | Type | Default value | Description |
AuthorField | string | author/editor |
BibTeX field containing author names. Can specify fallback field, e.g. author/editor |
AuthorLastSeparator | string | & |
Text inserted between the two last author names. |
AuthorLastSeparatorInText | string | If specified, this propery overrides AuthorLastSeparator for in-text citations such as
Smith & Jones (2001) .
|
|
AuthorSeparator | string | , |
Text inserted between author names except the last two. |
BracketAfter | string | ] |
The closing bracket of citations. |
BracketAfterInList | string | ] | The closing bracket for citation numbering in the reference list. |
BracketBefore | string | [ |
The opening bracket of citations. |
BracketBeforeInList | string | [ | The opening bracket for citation numbering in the reference list. |
CitationCharacterFormat | string | Default |
If FormatCitations is set to true , the character format with the name
given by this property will be applied to citations. The character format must be defined in your
OpenOffice document.
|
CitationSeparator | string | ; |
Text inserted between items when a citation contains multiple entries, e.g. [Smith 2001; Jones
2002] |
EtAlString | string | et al. |
Text inserted after author names when not all authors are listed, e.g. [Smith et al. 2001] |
FormatCitations | boolean | false |
Determines whether formatting should be applied to citations. If true, a character format will be
applied to the citations. The property CitationCharacterFormat controls which format
should be applied, and the given format must be defined in your OpenOffice document. Any font settings
and effects can be chosen within OpenOffice for your chosen character format.
|
GroupedNumbersSeparator | string | - |
Text inserted between numbers when numbered citations are grouped, e.g. [4-6] |
InTextYearSeparator | string | Single Space | Text inserted between author names and starting bracket before year in in-text citations. |
ItalicEtAl | boolean | true |
If true, the "et al." string in citation markers is italicized. |
MaxAuthors | integer | 3 |
The maximum number of authors to list in a citation that has appeared earlier in the document. |
MaxAuthorsFirst | integer | 3 |
The maximum number of authors to list in a citation when appearing for the first time. |
MinimumGroupingCount | integer | 3 |
The minimum number of consecutive entries a citation should contain before the numbers are grouped,
e.g. [4-6] vs. [4; 5; 6] .
|
MultiCiteChronological | boolean | true |
If true , multiple entries in the same citation are sorted chronologically, otherwise
they are sorted alphabetically.
|
PageInfoSeparator | string | ; |
For citations with extra information, e.g. page numbers, this string is inserted between the year
(for author-year citations) or the citation number (for numbered citations) and the extra information.
E.g. the text between 2001 and p. 301 in [Smith 2001; p. 301] .
|
UniquefierSeparator | string | , |
Text inserted between letters used to differentiate citations with similar authors and year. E.g.
the text between a and b in [Smith 2001a, b] .
|
YearField | string | year |
The BibTeX field to get publication year from. |
YearSeparator | string | Single Space | Text inserted between author names and year in parenthesis citations such as [Smith 2001] . |
If numbered entries are used, the BracketBefore
and BracketAfter
properties
are the most important - they define which characters the citation number is wrapped in. The citation is composed
as follows:
[BracketBefore][Number][BracketAfter]
where [Number] is the number of the citation, determined according to the ordering of the bibliography and/or
the position of the citation in the text. If a citation refers to several entries, these will be separated
by the string given in the property CitationSeparator
(for instance, if CitationSeparator
=;,
the citation could look like [2;4;6]
). If two or more of the entries have a series of consecutive
numbers, the numbers can be grouped (for instance [2-4]
for 2, 3 and 4 or [2;5-7]
for
2, 5, 6 and 7). The property GroupedNumbersSeparator
(default -
) determines which string
separates the first and last
of the grouped numbers. The integer property MinimumGroupingCount
(default 3) determines what number of
consecutive numbers is required before entries are grouped. If MinimumGroupingCount
=3, the numbers
2 and 3 will not be grouped, while 2, 3, 4 will be. If MinimumGroupingCount
=0, no grouping will be
done regardless of the number of consecutive numbers.
If numbered entries are not used, author-year citations will be created based on the citation properties.
A parenthesis citation is composed as follows:
[BracketBefore][Author][YearSeparator][Year][BracketAfter]
where [Author] is the result of looking up the field or fields given in the AuthorField
property,
and formatting a list of authors. The list can contain up to MaxAuthors
names - if more are present,
the list will be composed as the first author plus the text specified in the property EtAlString
.
If the property MaxAuthorsFirst
is given, it overrides MaxAuthors
the first time each
citation appears in the text.
If several, slash-separated, fields are given in the AuthorField
property, they will be looked up
successively if the first field is empty for the given BibTeX entry. In the example above, the "author" field will
be used, but if empty, the "editor" field will be used as a backup.
The names in the author list will be separated by the text given by the AuthorSeparator
property, except for the last two names, which will be separated by the text given by
AuthorLastSeparator
.
If the property AuthorLastSeparatorInText
is given, it overrides the former for citations of the
in-text
type. This makes it possible to get citations like (Olsen & Jensen, 2008)
and Olsen and
Jensen (2008)
for the same style.
[Year] is the result of looking up the field or fields given in the [YearField] property.
An in-text citation is composed as follows:
[Author][InTextYearSeparator][BracketBefore][Year][BracketAfter]
where [Author] and [Year] are resolved in exactly the same way as for the parenthesis citations.
If two different cited sources have the same authors and publication year, and author-year citations are used,
their markers will need modification in order to be distinguishable. This is done automatically by appending a
letter after the year for
each of the publications; 'a' for the first cited reference, 'b' for the next, and so on.
For instance, if the author "Olsen" has two cited papers from 2005, the citation markers will be modified to
(Olsen, 2005a)
and (Olsen, 2005b)
. In the bibliography
layout, the placement of the "uniquefier" letter is indicated explicitly by inserting the virtual field
uniq
.
If several entries that have been "uniquefied" are cited together, they will be grouped in the citation
marker. For instance, of the two entries in the example above are cited together, the citation marker will
be (Olsen, 2005a, b)
rather than Olsen, 2005a; Olsen, 2005b)
. The grouped uniquefier
letters (a and b in our example) will be separated by the string specified by the UniquefierSeparator
property.
Author-year citations referring more than one entry will by default be sorted chronologically. If you wish them
to be sorted alphabetically, the citation property MultiCiteChronological
should be set to
false.
.
The LAYOUT section describes how the bibliography entry for each entry type in JabRef
should appear. Each line should start with either the name of a BibTeX entry type, or the word
default
, followed by a '='. The default
layout will be used for all
entry types for which an explicit layout hasn't been given.
The remainder of each line defines the layout, with normal text and spaces appearing literally
in the bibliography entry. Information from the BibTeX entry is inserted by adding \field
markers
with the appropriate field name (e.g. \author
for inserting the author names). Formatting
information for the field can be included here, following JabRef's standard export layout syntax.
Refer to JabRef's documentation on custom export
filters
for more information about which formatters are available.
If author-year citations are used, you have to explicitly specify the position of the "uniquefier" letter
that is added to distinguish similar-looking citations. This is done by including a marker for the virtual field
uniq
, typically right after the year (as shown in the example style file). The uniq
field is automatically set correctly for each entry before its reference text is laid out.
To indicate formatting in the bibliography, you can use the HTML-like tag pairs <b> </b>, <i> </i>, <sup> </sup> and <sub> </sub> to specify bold text, italic text, superscript and subscript, respectively.
If you are using numbered citations, the number for each entry will be automatically inserted at the start
of each entry in the reference list. By default, the numbers will be enclosed in the same brackets defined for
citations. The optional citation properties BracketBeforeInList
and
BracketAfterInList
override BracketBefore
and BracketAfter
if set. These
can be used if you want different types of brackets (or no brackets) in the reference list. Note that these need
not be brackets as such - they can be any combination of characters.