Get BibTeX from a DOI

You probably know that doi.org will redirect any DOI you throw at it to the current URL of the corresponding document. For example: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemgeo.2024.122148 will send you to Elsevier.

But you can use something called HTTP headers to specify that, instead of a simple redirect, you want to get back the bibliographic information for that reference in BibTeX format. A simple way to do so is to use a command-line utility such as curl:

curl -LH "Accept: text/bibliography; style=bibtex" https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemgeo.2024.122148

Which will yield something like:

 @article{Pesnin_2024, title={Mineralogical and environmental effects on the δ13C, δ18O, and clumped isotope composition of modern bryozoans}, volume={662}, ISSN={0009-2541}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chemgeo.2024.122148}, DOI={10.1016/j.chemgeo.2024.122148}, journal={Chemical Geology}, publisher={Elsevier BV}, author={Pesnin, Marie and Thaler, Caroline and Daëron, Mathieu and Nomade, Sébastien and Rollion-Bard, Claire}, year={2024}, month=sep, pages={122148} }

Streamlining the process

Let's make our lives easier by automating the process further, so that (a) there is no need to add the header format and prefix the DOI with https://doi.org/, and (b) sending the output directly to the clipboard. Unsuprisingly, this is easy to achieve with Python:

#! /usr/bin/env python

import sys, requests, pyperclip

doi = sys.argv[1]              # DOI is the first command-line argument
url = f'http://doi.org/{doi}'  # construct the URL

# HTTP header to get BibTeX format back
headers = {'Accept': 'text/bibliography; style=bibtex'}

# send out the HTTP request
r = requests.get(url, headers = headers)

r.encoding = 'utf-8'  # specify that the response is UTF8-encoded
bib = r.text[1:-1]    # shave of the first and last characters of the response
pyperclip.copy(bib)   # copy the result to the clipboard
print(bib)            # and print it out as an indicator of success

Save the above as doi2bibtex, make it executable (this should require something like chmod +x doi2bibtex assuming you are on a POSIX system), move it to somewhere on your path, and voilà, now you can simply type doi2bibtex followed by any valid DOI, wait to the response to print out, and immediately copy the results into your favorite bibliographic piece of software.

For now, the Python code above requires a functional Python installation, along with the requests and pyperclip dependencies, which is no fun at all. See here for a painless solution to this problem.