You’re writing and need to cite something you haven’t added yet. Three ways, quickest first.
1. Live Search (type an in-text citation)
Type in the Live Search box above the list: an author surname and a few title words (or a DOI works too). Results come from Crossref and OpenAlex as you type. Click the right one and it’s added to your list, formatted in the current style.
This video shows typing “schwartz and bransford”, a classic paper appearing at the top of the list, and clicking to add it to the reference list. You can also see that when you mouse-over a reference, it will show the abstract if it is available.
2. Drop the PDF of the paper
Drag the paper’s own PDF onto the page. RefRunner reads the DOI off the first page and adds that paper as a reference.
- If your list already has references, a single PDF is added as a paper to cite. (A notice offers Use its reference list instead if you actually meant to process it as a manuscript.) Here we drop a PDF onto the browser (it doesn’t matter where) and it’s added as a reference.
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Note: If you’re starting fresh, with no references, a single PDF is treated as a manuscript — we extract its reference list. To add the paper itself instead, drop it after you’ve started a list, or paste its DOI.
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Several PDFs at once are always treated as papers to cite and all are added. You can select many PDFs and drag-and-drop them. Since files are processed by your browser and not uploaded anywhere, it’s pretty quick.
3. Paste a reference or a DOI
Paste a citation (however rough) or just a DOI like 10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68 into the text box and click Check references. It’s looked up and added like any other entry. Here I pasted just the authors, year, and title, without the journal. RefRunner runs down the correct reference and inserts it. You can see on the left the green text that is added to the original pasted reference.
4. Click a missing in-text citation
This is the feature that I still find most surprising. About half the time, just an author-year citation is enough to find the desired reference. This means that you can just type in a familiar citation as you write and RerRunner will run it down with a single click (sometimes you might need to type a word or two). This search is more clever than immediately obvious. When you type a word, it filters the references last retrieved, and then you type a space at the end of that word, it’ll fetch a new set of references that include that word. (In other words, a space can make fetch happen.)
5. Include a note in your document
Many authors when writing will include a note in a document to come back and insert the reference later. You know that the perfect citation exists, but it’s sometimes more important to keep writing than to track down the citation.
When you do that, RefRunner will present that text as the in-text citation, and when you click it, it’ll seed the search with that text. If that text doesn’t find what you really want, you can edit it until you do find the right reference.
This video shows clicking the text, selecting a reference from the list, and then displaying the inserted reference. In practice, you would likely remember the author’s, or a particular key word from the title to search for.
From a legacy reference manager
Do you have an export from your old reference manager? Drop it on the page and every record is imported and checked.
- .bib — Zotero, JabRef, BibDesk, Overleaf, or any LaTeX project
- .ris — EndNote, Mendeley, RefWorks, Paperpile, Zotero, and the “export” button on most databases (Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, Google Scholar)
This is a quick way to build a reference list from one of those apps — and a way to audit your database. RefRunner compares each record against the publisher’s current metadata, so a preprint you saved two years ago comes back with the volume, issue, pages, and year it was eventually published with, and a DOI if it didn’t have one.
One thing this means, that I will be expanding on elsewhere, is that if you use Google Scholar, you can export your list as one of these formats and have RefRunner make it into usable references.
Tip
Everything you add is part of the same list, so you can mix: upload a manuscript, add the two papers a reviewer asked for via Live Search, and download the updated .docx with all of them in place.