BibMan is a terminal-based bibliography manager designed for researchers who prefer working with the keyboard rather than a conventional graphical application. Its interface is inspired by Vim and Ranger, providing a straightforward way to organise academic papers and their associated bibliographic information.
The application follows a transparent approach to data storage. Bibliographic records are maintained in a BibTeX file, while collection information, attached PDF documents and notes are stored separately. Users retain direct access to these files and can modify the underlying information without relying exclusively on BibMan’s interface.
BibMan uses tags as the main mechanism for organising papers. Its collection tree provides a convenient way to filter references, rather than imposing a rigid hierarchy in which each paper must belong to one location.
The application is intended for people who want a lightweight reference management workflow with direct access to text-based bibliography data.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Three-column terminal interface displaying collections, papers and bibliographic attributes.
- Vim-style navigation using keyboard shortcuts.
- Organise research papers using tags and tag-based collections.
- Display collections in a tree, with nested selections providing combined tag filters.
- Store bibliography entries in an editable BibTeX file.
- Open the current bibliography entry directly in Vim for modification.
- Add new papers and BibTeX records through interactive commands.
- Associate locally stored PDF documents with bibliography entries.
- Download PDF documents from supplied URLs.
- Open attached PDF files using an external document viewer.
- Maintain notes associated with individual research papers.
- Search across bibliographic fields to locate references.
- Copy citation keys and individual bibliographic attributes to the clipboard.
- Provide access to web-based references when a bibliography entry contains a URL but no PDF.
- Customise configuration and the location of the bibliography data directory.
Website: github.com/ductri/BibMan
Support:
Developer: Tri Nguyen
License: MIT License
BibMan is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Terminal-Based Bibliography Tools | |
|---|---|
| coBib | Simple, console-based bibliography management tool |
| Rebiber | Replaces unofficial BibTeX references with official records |
| papis | Extensible command-line based document and bibliography manager |
| bibiman | TUI for fast and simple interaction with a BibLaTeX database |
| bibtex-tidy | Cleans, sorts and formats BibTeX bibliography files |
| Hayagriva | Rusty bibliography management |
| bibman (Haskell) | CLI/TUI bibliography manager |
| pubs | Bibliography on the command line |
| BibMan | TUI bibliography manager |
| Xapers | Personal journal article management system |
| papers | Command-line tool to manage bibliography |
| Gorae | Terminal-based library manager for PDF and EPUB collections |
| CiteBib | Generate a Bibtex or LaTeX bibliography |
| bibclean | BiBTeX and Scribe bibliography prettyprinter and syntax checker |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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