Tool

Generate academic citations from DOIs, arXiv IDs, and URLs

OneCite is a Python CLI and library that resolves DOIs, PMIDs, arXiv IDs, and other identifiers into clean, auditable BibTeX entries.

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Why it matters

Automate the creation and formatting of academic citations and references across multiple citation styles and literature types, eliminating manual bibliography management for researchers and writers.

Outcomes

What it gets done

01

Extract metadata from DOIs, arXiv identifiers, titles, or URLs

02

Generate citations in BibTeX, APA, MLA, and other academic formats

03

Query 10+ academic databases to retrieve complete reference information

04

Complete missing metadata fields intelligently across 7+ literature types

Install

Add it to your toolbox

Run in your project directory:

curl -fsSL https://spark.entire.vc/get/mcp-onecite | bash

Overview

OneCite

OneCite is a Python CLI and library that resolves DOIs, PMIDs, arXiv IDs, ISBNs, and other identifiers into clean BibTeX entries via CrossRef, PubMed, arXiv, and other sources. It also offers plain-text candidate search, CI benchmarking, and an install-health doctor command. Use it to turn mixed-format reference lists into consistent BibTeX, especially in automation or CI pipelines. Plain-text titles without an identifier go through the separate, unverified suggest command instead.

What it does

OneCite is a Python command-line tool and library for citation management. It resolves strong identifiers - DOIs, PMIDs, arXiv IDs, ISBNs, GitHub URLs, Zenodo and DataCite DOIs - into formatted BibTeX bibliographic entries through a 4-stage pipeline (clean, query, validate, format). It queries CrossRef, PubMed, arXiv, Semantic Scholar, DataCite, Zenodo, and Google Books to fill in fields like journal, volume, pages, authors, and abstract, and covers 7+ citation types: journal articles, conference papers, books, software, datasets, theses, and preprints. Plain-text title searches (references that aren't yet a strong identifier) are handled separately by the onecite suggest command, which returns unverified candidates rather than mixing them into authoritative BibTeX output.

When to use - and when NOT to

Use OneCite when a reference list has accumulated in mixed, ad-hoc formats - DOIs copied from browser tabs, arXiv IDs, PMIDs, ISBNs, software URLs, data DOIs, BibTeX fragments - and needs to become clean, consistent BibTeX, especially in an automation or CI context where JSON/NDJSON output and exit codes (0 success, 1 error, 2 unresolved entries with --fail-on-unresolved) matter. It's also usable as a Python library (process_references) inside a larger pipeline. Don't use onecite process to resolve a reference you only have as a plain-text title with no identifier - that goes through onecite suggest instead, and its output is explicitly candidates for human review, not verified metadata; the optional Google Scholar fallback on suggest is off by default because it scrapes a service with no public API and isn't guaranteed reproducible.

Inputs and outputs

Input: a .txt or .bib file, a - for stdin, or a direct identifier/reference string (input type is auto-detected - .bib files are treated as BibTeX, everything else as plain text). Output: BibTeX by default (currently the only supported --output-format), written to a file via --output/-o or to stdout; --json prints a stable JSON envelope instead, and --ndjson streams newline-delimited JSON events for automation workflows. A YAML-based template preset (journal_article_full by default, or conference_paper, book, thesis, dataset, software) supplies a fallback BibTeX entry type when auto-detection can't determine one.

onecite process references.txt -o results.bib --quiet

Integrations

Resolves identifiers against CrossRef, PubMed, arXiv, Semantic Scholar, DataCite, Zenodo, and Google Books, with an optional best-effort Google Scholar fallback (pip install onecite[scholar]) used only when CrossRef and Semantic Scholar return nothing. Ships an onecite benchmark command with a bundled deterministic regression suite (covering DOI, arXiv, PMID, GitHub, and Zenodo/DataCite lookups) for CI, configurable via --min-success-rate, --cases, and --live; and an onecite doctor command that checks installation health (package importability, bundled templates, benchmark resources, the repository's own OneCite Skill) with a stable JSON output envelope. The repository also bundles an onecite Skill package (skills/onecite/SKILL.md) giving automation and contributor workflows a repeatable reference-cleanup procedure.

Who it's for

Researchers and academic writers cleaning up mixed-format reference lists into BibTeX, and developers building citation-processing automation or CI pipelines that need machine-readable JSON/NDJSON output and deterministic exit codes. Available via PyPI (pip install onecite, Python 3.10+) under the MIT license.

Source README

OneCite Logo

OneCite

Citation & Academic Reference Toolkit

Downloads
Awesome CLI Apps

Tests
codecov
PyPI
Python
MIT
Docs
Awesome LaTeX

Features β€’ Quick Start β€’ πŸ“– Advanced Usage β€’ πŸ—ΊοΈ Roadmap β€’ 🀝 Contributing


OneCite is a command-line tool and Python library for citation management. It resolves strong identifiers such as DOIs, PMIDs, arXiv IDs, ISBNs, GitHub URLs, and data DOIs into formatted bibliographic entries, while plain-text title searches are handled by the separate candidate-only suggest command.


Researchers frequently accumulate reference lists in ad-hoc formats-DOIs copied from browser tabs, arXiv IDs from paper PDFs, PMIDs, ISBNs, software URLs, data DOIs, and BibTeX fragments from various sources. Cleaning these into consistent BibTeX output is tedious and error-prone. OneCite parses raw reference text and resolves strong identifiers against configured sources such as CrossRef, PubMed, arXiv, DataCite, GitHub, and Google Books. Plain-text title searches are exposed through onecite suggest so candidates can be reviewed without being mistaken for verified BibTeX. The result is a reproducible processing layer that reports unresolved entries and produces auditable BibTeX where metadata can be found.


Features

Feature Description
Candidate Suggestions Search incomplete plain-text references with onecite suggest without resolving them to BibTeX.
Multiple Formats Input .txt/.bib β†’ Output BibTeX.
4-stage Pipeline A 4-stage process (clean β†’ query β†’ validate β†’ format) to produce consistent output.
Field Completion Fill available fields returned by metadata sources, such as journal, volume, pages, authors, and abstract.
πŸŽ“ 7+ Citation Types Handles journal articles, conference papers, books, software, datasets, theses, and preprints.
Multi-Source Lookup Uses source-specific routes for CrossRef, arXiv, PubMed, Semantic Scholar, Google Books, and others.
Many Identifier Types Resolves DOI, PMID, arXiv ID, ISBN, GitHub URL, Zenodo DOI, and DataCite DOI inputs.
Custom Templates YAML-based presets that provide a fallback BibTeX entry type when auto-detection is inconclusive.

🌐 Data Sources

CrossRef
Semantic Scholar
PubMed
arXiv
DataCite
Zenodo
Google Books

Quick Start

Install and try OneCite in a few steps.

1. Installation

# Recommended: Install from PyPI
pip install onecite

2. Create an Input File

Create a file named references.txt with your mixed-format references:

# references.txt
# Add blank lines between entries to avoid misidentification

10.1038/nature14539

arXiv:1706.03762

ISBN:9780262035613

https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow

10.5281/zenodo.3233118

arXiv:2103.00020

Smith, J. (2020). Neural Architecture Search. PhD Thesis. Stanford University.

3. Run OneCite

Execute the command to process your file and generate a clean .bib output.

onecite process references.txt -o results.bib --quiet

4. View Output

Your results.bib file now contains entries of different types.

View Complete Output (results.bib)
@article{LeCun2015Deep,
  doi = "10.1038/nature14539",
  title = "Deep learning",
  author = "LeCun, Yann and Bengio, Yoshua and Hinton, Geoffrey",
  journal = "Nature",
  year = 2015,
  volume = 521,
  number = 7553,
  pages = "436-444",
  publisher = "Springer Science and Business Media LLC",
  url = "https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539",
  type = "journal-article",
  abstract = "Deep learning allows computational models that are composed of multiple processing layers to learn representations of data with multiple levels of abstraction...",
}
@inproceedings{Vaswani2017Attention,
  arxiv = "1706.03762",
  title = "Attention Is All You Need",
  author = "Vaswani, Ashish and Shazeer, Noam and Parmar, Niki and Uszkoreit, Jakob and Jones, Llion and Gomez, Aidan N. and Kaiser, Lukasz and Polosukhin, Illia",
  year = 2017,
  booktitle = "Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS)",
  url = "https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762",
}
# ... and 5 more entries ...

πŸ“– Advanced Usage

Direct String and Stdin Input
onecite process "10.1038/nature14539"
onecite suggest "Attention is all you need, Vaswani et al., NIPS 2017"
echo "10.1038/nature14539" | onecite process -
🐍 Use as a Python Library

Use OneCite directly in your Python scripts.

from onecite import process_references

result = process_references(
    input_content="10.1038/nature14539",
    input_type="txt",
    template_name="journal_article_full",
    output_format="bibtex",
    interactive_callback=lambda candidates: -1
)

print('\n\n'.join(result['results']))
πŸ’» CLI Commands & Options

OneCite provides a command-line interface with the following commands and options:

onecite process

The main command for processing references through the OneCite pipeline.

Usage:

onecite process <input_file> [OPTIONS]

Arguments:

  • input_file - Input file path, - for stdin, or a strong identifier/reference string

Options:

Option Short Description Default
--input-type Input format: txt or bib txt
--template Fallback BibTeX entry-type preset when auto-detection is inconclusive journal_article_full
--output-format Output format (currently only bibtex supported) bibtex
--output -o Output file path (default: stdout) -
--quiet -q Suppress verbose logging output False
--json Print a stable JSON envelope instead of BibTeX text False
--ndjson Print newline-delimited JSON events for streaming automation workflows False
--fail-on-unresolved Return exit code 2 when any entry cannot be resolved False

Examples:

# Process a text file
onecite process references.txt -o results.bib

# Process a BibTeX file with auto-detection
onecite process references.bib

# Use stdin
echo "10.1038/nature14539" | onecite process -

# Process a direct string (DOI)
onecite process "10.1038/nature14539"

# Process with custom template
onecite process references.txt --template conference_paper

# Quiet mode for scripts
onecite process references.txt -o results.bib --quiet

# Automation-friendly JSON with unresolved-entry exit-code handling
onecite process references.txt --json --fail-on-unresolved

# Streaming NDJSON for automation
onecite process references.txt --ndjson

onecite suggest

Search for candidate matches without producing BibTeX or returning a
validation passed status.

onecite suggest "Attention is all you need, Vaswani et al., NIPS 2017" --json

Optional Google Scholar fallback. suggest accepts --google-scholar
(requires the optional scholarly package: pip install onecite[scholar]).
It is consulted only as a best-effort fallback when CrossRef and Semantic
Scholar return nothing. Because it scrapes a service with no public API, it
is off by default, may be rate-limited or blocked by a CAPTCHA, and is not
guaranteed to be reproducible
- it is exposed only on suggest (candidates
for human review), never on process (authoritative output).

pip install onecite[scholar]
onecite suggest "some obscure title" --google-scholar

onecite --version

Display the installed OneCite version.

Usage:

onecite --version

onecite version

Alternative command to display version information.

Usage:

onecite version

onecite templates

List the bundled fallback BibTeX templates and the fields they request.

Usage:

onecite templates
onecite templates --json

onecite benchmark

Run a small deterministic regression suite for covered DOI lookup, arXiv
lookup, PMID/PubMed lookup, GitHub software URLs, Zenodo/DataCite dataset
DOIs, and mixed valid/invalid batches. The command is designed for CI and
automation workflows that need a machine-readable pass/fail check; it is not
a comprehensive citation-accuracy benchmark.

Usage:

onecite benchmark [OPTIONS]

Options:

Option Description Default
--cases Path to a custom benchmark suite JSON file bundled golden cases
--min-success-rate Minimum covered-case pass rate required for exit code 0 1.0
--json Print the benchmark report as JSON False
--live Use live external APIs instead of bundled offline fixtures False

Examples:

onecite benchmark
onecite benchmark --json
onecite benchmark --live --json
onecite benchmark --cases my_cases.json --min-success-rate 1.0 --json

The repository baseline record is stored at benchmarks/leaderboard.json, with
reproduction instructions in benchmarks/README.md.

onecite doctor

Check the local installation health for automation and CI. The doctor
command checks package importability, bundled templates, packaged benchmark
resources, the repository-contained OneCite Skill, and the offline benchmark
regression check.

Usage:

onecite doctor
onecite doctor --json

The JSON output is a stable envelope with schema_version, tool,
command, status, environment, summary, and checks fields.

OneCite Skill for Automated Workflows

The repository includes a local skill package at skills/onecite/SKILL.md.
It gives automation and contributor workflows a repeatable procedure for
reference cleanup, benchmark and doctor checks, and explicit
reporting of unresolved entries.
The skill is repository-contained and does not install itself into any local
tool memory.

Input Type Auto-Detection

When --input-type is not specified, OneCite automatically detects the input type:

  • Files ending with .bib are treated as BibTeX format
  • All other files and strings are treated as plain text

Available Templates

OneCite supports several template presets for different entry types:

  • journal_article_full - Full journal article entry (default)
  • conference_paper - Conference proceedings paper
  • book - Book entry
  • thesis - Thesis/dissertation entry
  • dataset - Dataset entry
  • software - Software/code entry

Exit Codes

  • 0 - Success
  • 1 - Error occurred (invalid input, processing failure, etc.)
  • 2 - One or more entries were unresolved when --fail-on-unresolved was used

For onecite benchmark and onecite doctor, exit code 0 means the
configured checks passed and exit code 1 means at least one check failed.

πŸ—ΊοΈ Roadmap

  • OneCite Skill - Repository-contained operating guide for local citation-cleanup workflows
  • Benchmarking - Small deterministic regression suite, configurable pass-rate gate, and baseline record
  • Enhanced CLI - Automation-friendly JSON, NDJSON, summaries, and exit codes for reference processing

🀝 Contributing

Contributions are always welcome! Please see CONTRIBUTING.md for development guidelines and instructions on how to submit a pull request.

πŸ“„ License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.

FAQ

Common questions

Discussion

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