extract_bib

extract_bib is a simple R script to create minimal a bibtex library file for an article. Some journals require tex and bib files with submissions. However, I have only one master bib file. That file currently contains 3543 references. Rather than send all of that to the journal to help typeset my manuscript, I only want to send a bib file with the references included in my article. This script does that.

• Read a tex file
• Extract all of the citations
• Read a master bib file
• Match the citations from the tex file to the master library bib file
• Output a minimal library for submission

• I use natbib and so the citations I search for in the tex file are only citet{} and citep{}. Expand this to other citation functions.
• I remove some crud from the library put there by my citation manager (Mendeley), including annotations and file locations, as well as abstracts. If there are other unneeded fields, they can be removed from the minimal library output.
• Expand to work with multiple input libraries or multiple input tex files?