DOI to RIS converter
Paste one or more DOIs and get an RIS entry for each, ready to copy or download as one .ris file. Reference managers read RIS directly, so the details land in the right fields without retyping.
Your RIS entries
How it works
Paste your DOIs
One per line, up to 10 at a time. A bare DOI, a doi: prefix or a full doi.org link all work, and duplicates are looked up once.
We look each one up
Each DOI is looked up in OpenAlex, an open catalogue of scholarly works, and then at doi.org when OpenAlex has no record. That covers DOIs registered with Crossref and DataCite.
Import the file
Every DOI that resolves gets one RIS entry. Download them as a .ris file and open it with the import option of your reference manager, or copy the text if you only need one or two.
A worked example
Paste the DOI of the 2015 Nature review of deep learning and you get this entry:
10.1038/nature14539
TY - JOUR AU - LeCun, Yann AU - Bengio, Yoshua AU - Hinton, Geoffrey E. TI - Deep learning T2 - Nature PY - 2015 DA - 2015/05/26/ VL - 521 IS - 7553 SP - 436 EP - 444 PB - Nature Portfolio DO - 10.1038/nature14539 UR - https://doi.org/10.1038/nature14539 ER -
Each line is one field: TY is the type of work, AU an author, TI the title, T2 the journal, PY the year, VL and IS the volume and issue, SP and EP the first and last page, and DO the DOI. ER closes the entry. A reference manager reads these tags and fills its own fields from them.
What each result means
- Found
- The DOI resolved and the entry is built from its record. Check it once after the import, as you would any reference.
- No record found
- Neither OpenAlex nor doi.org knows this DOI. It may have a typo, or it may be very new. Copy it again from the paper's own page.
- This DOI is registered with an agency we cannot read yet
- The DOI exists, but it belongs to a registration agency other than Crossref or DataCite, so we cannot read its record yet. Many Japanese, Korean and Italian DOIs are like this. Add that reference by hand.
- Not a DOI
- The line does not look like a DOI. A DOI starts with 10., then a number, a slash and the rest.
- Daily limit reached
- The daily limit for the free tools has been reached. It resets at midnight UTC.
- Could not look this up right now
- A lookup did not answer in time. Nothing is wrong with your DOI: try again in a minute.
What RIS is
RIS is a plain text format for references that almost every reference manager can read and write. It dates from the early days of desktop citation software and has stayed because it is simple: one field per line, each starting with a two letter tag.
Because it is plain text, an RIS file is easy to check by eye. If an author name or a page range looks wrong, you can see it before you import, and fix it in your reference manager afterwards.
RIS or BibTeX?
Pick the format your tool reads best. Zotero, EndNote and Mendeley all import RIS, and most library catalogues and databases export it too.
If you write in a system that reads .bib files, the DOI to BibTeX converter gives you the same references as BibTeX entries. The details come from the same records either way.
Importing the file
Download the .ris file and use the import option of your reference manager: in most of them it sits in the File menu. The references arrive as new items, usually in a collection or folder you can rename.
Importing the same DOI twice usually creates a duplicate item. If you are adding to an existing library, run your reference manager's duplicate check after the import.
Check before you cite
A reference is only as good as the record behind it. Records are usually right, but a title can carry odd capitals, a conference paper can be listed as a journal article, and very new papers sometimes lack a page range.
Open each new item once after the import and compare it with the paper itself, especially the title and the page numbers.
Questions
Is this DOI to RIS converter free?
Yes. You can convert 10 DOIs at a time and 30 a day without an account. The limit resets at midnight UTC.
Which reference managers can import the file?
Zotero, EndNote and Mendeley all import .ris files, and so do most other reference managers and many library systems.
Where do the details come from?
From OpenAlex, an open catalogue of scholarly works, and from doi.org, which hands the request on to Crossref or DataCite depending on who registered the DOI.
Do you keep the DOIs I paste?
No. The DOIs are sent to OpenAlex and doi.org to look them up, and are not saved or linked to you. We count how many lookups each visitor makes in a day, using a key that cannot be turned back into an address and that changes whenever our service restarts.
Why does the file use Windows line endings?
The RIS format asks for them, and every reference manager reads them correctly on any system. You do not need to change anything.
Can I get a formatted reference list instead?
Yes, the DOI to citation generator formats the same DOIs in APA, MLA, Chicago, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver, AMA, Nature or ACS.
A DOI says it is registered with an agency you cannot read yet.
Most DOIs are registered with Crossref or DataCite, and we can read those. Some registration agencies, common for Japanese, Korean and Italian publications, publish records we cannot read yet. Add those references by hand.
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