Why matching citation counts can hide a failed migration
Check every author, title character, identifier and sidecar-only field; an unchanged reference count can conceal lost citation meaning.
Counts do not prove a complete citation
A converted file can have the same number of references while its second author, DOI, Greek φ, or title case has changed. Each is a meaningful defect for a literature handoff. The public discussion behind this workflow includes a researcher using ris2xml followed by xml2bib, and another reporting that a web converter accepts concatenated RIS entries. The original question supplied JSON and eventually found an existing BibTeX entry; it did not supply the test RIS bytes used here.
| Item to compare | What counts can hide | Where to check |
|---|---|---|
| Ordered authors | A missing second author or a changed suffix can leave the record count unchanged. | Compare all names, their order and corporate spelling in the complete target and field report. |
| Title and φ | Characters or case protection can change while the entry remains readable. | Compare interpreted target text with the original braces and commands retained in citation-mapping.json. |
| DOI and serial identifiers | A changed DOI, ISBN or ISSN still belongs to one record. | Compare the full values and the record type; RIS SN maps to issn for JOUR and isbn otherwise. |
| Unfamiliar metadata | A target file can omit an unrepresentable field without losing an entry. | Use default rejection or explicitly keep the complete sidecar; sidecar-only fields have no target representation. |
Keep representation differences visible
BibTeX names with suffixes are ordered family, suffix, given. RIS specifies family, given, suffix. Corporate-author comma conventions and brace protection also differ. Moving strings unchanged can produce a syntactically readable file with different meaning.
A field report makes those transformations inspectable. Unknown metadata belongs in an explicit complete source report when it cannot be represented in the target. A successful conversion is an opportunity to check that report, rather than a reason to discard it.
- Select BibTeX → RIS or RIS → BibTeX explicitly. This workflow does not convert NBIB or JSON and does not fetch DOI metadata.
- Macro definitions/references, preambles and cross-references are refused even with sidecar mode. Prepare a resolved export in the original manager and keep the original.
- Save both the complete target citation file and citation-mapping.json. Keep every sidecar-only field with its original text and source position.
- Import a copy into the intended manager and inspect all fields. Corporate trailing-comma conventions and title case handling can differ between managers.
Read the whole target independently
The staged native evidence reads article, book and conference-paper outputs with independent bibliography readers and compares every field. It also alters physical output files by removing an author, changing φ and DOI, or damaging braces, and confirms that independent validation detects each change. Those checks demonstrate the local format work; browser interaction, receiving software behavior and formal admission still need their own review.
References
- Citation migration question and replies
The question supplied JSON and later found an existing BibTeX entry. Replies describe an actual ris2xml/xml2bib workflow and a web converter accepting concatenated RIS; they do not supply the test RIS bytes used here.
- Original BibTeX manual
Explains original BibTeX entries, macros, cross-references and title case protection. This workflow refuses macros and cross-references and retains exact source braces in its report.
- Citation.js parser documentation
Documents Citation.js raw BibTeX parsing, field value types and LaTeX interpretation. It supports the parser choices here and does not establish a receiving manager’s import behavior.