Improving a workflow for importing BibTeX citations

If you have the BibTeX-Code available and copy that to your clipboard (either by opening the export.bib or by copying it from the homepage) and you click on the JabRef window (so that it has the focus) you can just paste (Ctrl+V) it as a new entry.

I knew that from BibDesk (Mac OS) which I am using and found the same for JabRef here http://sourceforge.net/projects/jabref/forums/forum/318825/topic/1653744

You can set up Jabref to automatically import a reference from Firefox into the current database, but it's somewhat arcane. Here is my solution under Linux:

1) Select Options -> Preferences -> Advanced -- and check "Listen for remote operation ..." I don't think it matters which port.

2) Create a small bash script (text file) named "jabref-import" that looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
java -jar ~/local/jabref/JabRef-2.8.1.jar -i --importToOpen "$*"

Replace "~/local/jabref/JabRef-2.8.1.jar" with the path to your Jabref .jar file on your machine. Or if you have a working executable called "jabref", you can replace everything before the "-i" with "jabref". Just make sure your executable accepts command-line options (mine didn't).

In Ubuntu 13.04, the following variant of the script works:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
jabref -i --importToOpen "$*"

3) Make the file executable:

chmod ugo+x jabref-import

4) Make sure Jabref is already open. Go to Firefox, download a citation file. It could be a .bib or .ris or .ref or whatever. Select the "Open with..." option in the dialog, and select the jabref-import executable that you just made. The import dialog should pop up in Jabref with your citation.

Here is my workflow.

1. Get the DOI of the article to cite. You find the DOI on the download page of the paper and it is also usually printed on the first page of the paper.
2. Paste the DOI into the Jabref search plugin DOI to BibTeX and press "fetch".
3. You will get a "list" of the search results, which is in most cases only one item. Click "OK" to import them.
4. Check the new entry in your bib file.

The benefit is that you need less time to import a new article. The DOI is also often easier to spot then the Export button on the web page.