Advanced Usage

Reviewing Candidates for Ambiguous References

onecite process only resolves strong identifiers (DOI, PMID, arXiv ID, ISBN, URLs) and never guesses from an ambiguous plain-text reference. To inspect candidate matches for a messy or incomplete reference, use onecite suggest:

onecite suggest "deep learning hinton 2015"

Candidates are returned for human review (with match scores and sources) and are not emitted as verified BibTeX. Add --json for a machine-readable envelope.

Batch Processing Multiple Files

Process multiple files sequentially:

for file in *.txt; do
    onecite process "$file" -o "${file%.txt}.bib"
done

Working with Different Data Sources

OneCite queries multiple data sources (CrossRef, PubMed, arXiv, Semantic Scholar, Google Books, and others) and selects the best match. All sources are tried for every reference — you do not need to configure routing manually:

onecite process references.txt

Custom Templates

OneCite uses YAML-based templates for output formatting. See Custom Templates for detailed information.

Working with Large Reference Lists

For large files (100+ entries), use quiet mode to improve performance:

onecite process large_file.txt --quiet -o output.bib

Memory-Efficient Processing

OneCite processes references sequentially, so it should handle files with thousands of entries. If you encounter memory issues, split your input file:

# Split into chunks
split -l 100 large_file.txt chunk_

# Process each chunk
for chunk in chunk_*; do
    onecite process "$chunk" -o "${chunk}.bib"
done

Error Handling and Recovery

Handling Failed Entries

If OneCite cannot process a reference, it will skip it and continue. Check the output for warnings.

To debug specific entries, process them individually:

echo "your_reference_here" > test.txt
onecite process test.txt

Combining Results

To merge multiple .bib files:

cat file1.bib file2.bib file3.bib > combined.bib

Using with Git for Version Control

Track changes to your bibliography:

git add references.txt results.bib
git commit -m "Update bibliography with new papers"

This allows you to see exactly what changed in your citations over time.

Integration with LaTeX and Overleaf

  1. Export your references to a .bib file:

    onecite process references.txt -o my_references.bib

  2. In your LaTeX file, add:

    \bibliography{my_references}
\bibliographystyle{plain}

  3. Upload to Overleaf and you’re done!

Python API Advanced Usage

For advanced Python usage, see Python API Reference.

Next Steps