@citestyle/ris

Parse RIS files into CSL-JSON and export CSL-JSON back to RIS. RIS (Research Information Systems) is the tagged format used by PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Zotero, and most reference managers for bulk export.

Use this to bring exported references into the Citestyle formatting pipeline, or to generate RIS files for sharing with other tools.

Installation

npm install @citestyle/ris

Parse RIS to CSL-JSON

import { parseRis } from '@citestyle/ris'

const ris = `
TY  - JOUR
AU  - Smith, John
AU  - Doe, Jane
TI  - A Study of Climate Change
JF  - Nature Climate Change
PY  - 2024
VL  - 14
SP  - 100
EP  - 108
DO  - 10.1038/example
ER  -
`

const items = parseRis(ris)

items[0].title          // "A Study of Climate Change"
items[0].author.length  // 2
items[0].page           // "100-108"  (SP + EP merged automatically)
items[0].DOI            // "10.1038/example"

Export CSL-JSON to RIS

import { exportRis } from '@citestyle/ris'

const output = exportRis([{
  id: '1',
  type: 'article-journal',
  title: 'A Study of Climate Change',
  author: [
    { family: 'Smith', given: 'John' },
    { family: 'Doe', given: 'Jane' },
  ],
  issued: { 'date-parts': [[2024]] },
  'container-title': 'Nature Climate Change',
  volume: '14',
  page: '100-108',
  DOI: '10.1038/example',
}])

// TY  - JOUR
// AU  - Smith, John
// AU  - Doe, Jane
// TI  - A Study of Climate Change
// JF  - Nature Climate Change
// ...
// ER  -

Full pipeline: RIS to formatted bibliography

import { parseRis } from '@citestyle/ris'
import { createRegistry } from '@citestyle/registry'
import * as apa from '@citestyle/styles/apa'

const items = parseRis(readFileSync('export.ris', 'utf-8'))

const registry = createRegistry(apa)
registry.addItems(items)

const bibliography = registry.getBibliography()
bibliography.forEach(entry => {
  console.log(entry.html)   // Semantic HTML with CSS classes and linked DOIs
  console.log(entry.text)   // Plain text for copy-paste
})

API

parseRis(str) → CslItem[]

Parse a RIS string into CSL-JSON items.

Handles:

• 30+ RIS type codes (JOUR, BOOK, CHAP, THES, CONF, RPRT, GEN, etc.)
• Repeatable tags (AU for multiple authors, KW for keywords)
• Automatic page merging from SP (start page) + EP (end page) tags
• Date parsing from PY and DA tags
• Editor (A2/ED), translator, and other contributor roles

Compatible with exports from: PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Zotero, Mendeley, EndNote, Google Scholar.

exportRis(items) → string

Serialize CSL-JSON items to a RIS string. Each record is delimited by TY (type) and ER (end of record) tags.