How-to videos
After I gave a RefRunner presentation and demonstration, a student asked if there were instructional videos. Well. . . . Now there are!!! We now have four short videos (1–3 minutes, captioned) on our YouTube channel and also our video page. Both are linked from the Help page.
- checking the references in a paper
- Live Search
- RefRunner Scholar search, and
- Doing a systematic literature review with the Research page.
More are in the works!
The RefRunner Toolkit for Chrome
The RefRunner Toolkit is in the Chrome Web Store. It works from a publisher’s article page with a DOI in the URL or metadata, from any page, select a citation, reference, or DOI and click the icon. A window opens up with information about the reference (if a DOI is available). A button will add the reference to your most recently opened RefRunner tab. There are also links to search for the article at Google Scholar and other places. For developers, there are links to see the metadata from Crossref, OpenAlex and others. I made it just so that I can more quickly investigate why a reference is not rendering as expected—increasingly, problems are explained by bad metadata, not bugs in the code! I hadn’t intended to share it, but after using it, I thought others might find it handy as well.
Withdrawn and corrected papers get flagged
Retractions were already flagged. Now corrections, expressions of concern, and withdrawn or corrected arXiv preprints are too, each linking to its notice. You probably would like to know about such issues with works you reference when you’re writing, before you submit to a publisher, and before a final version goes to the publisher. Who has time to click every DOI and then figure out where on the publisher’s page you can find that information? Now, in under minute, and RefRunner pulls it directly from Crossref and DataCite with a direct link for you to find out why.
RefRunner works with Overleaf, even on the free plan
A subscriber who checked some PDFs created with Overleaf lamented that there wasn’t a smooth workflow to work with Overleaf. Well, now there is! If you are a subscriber, don’t hesitate to ask for a feature you feel is missing!
Overleaf limits links to Zotero and Mendeley to paid plans. RefRunner will now give you a URL that you can link to an Overleaf .bib file. Choose New file → From external URL, paste the link, and your list is your project’s .bib file. Add or fix a reference in RefRunner, click Refresh in Overleaf, and recompile. Your list saves itself as you work (Ctrl-S works too), and cite keys never change once they’re published. Details at A Reference Manager for Overleaf's Free Plan — Search, Add, Refresh | RefRunner.
If you already have a .bib file, upload it: every entry is checked, your own keys and fields are kept, and you can edit an entry’s BibTeX by hand right on its card. Don’t hesitate to give feedback on this new feature!
More debugging, fixes, and features
- Paste the address bar. A publisher’s page URL (
link.springer.com/article/10.1007/…,tandfonline.com/doi/full/…) is read as its DOI, in the paste box and in Live Search. No more trying to get just the DOI, mostly any string with a DOI works. - “Link → DOI”. When a reference links to a web page and the work has a DOI, the DOI link is used instead, and a badge makes it clear that it’s the same place.
- “I checked — it’s real” and “Fix it myself” on references we couldn’t find anywhere, so a real but unindexed source stops looking like a problem. There exist legitimate references that RefRunner cannot find.
- Saved lists open faster. Opening a saved list shows each reference’s earlier result instead of looking everything up again.
- More kinds of sources: TV episodes, songs and albums (via Wikidata), YouTube videos, ICPSR datasets by study number, ERIC reports and dissertations, and theses with the right degree wording for each style.
- Better parsing of translators and editors after the names (“…, trans.”), OpenAlex author names like “Jones, Jared Carlos,” and Chicago-style lists.
- Improved Navigation on Phones, I don’t recommend using your phone to check and correct references, but I do it, and it works surprisingly well. Now the menu folds into ☰, and your account menu shows notifications from the hub (where this is posted) and how many lookups you have left.
- ORCID pages link each author to AuthorTrends for publication trends and integrity flags.
- An updated plain-language privacy policy.
Merch!
Show the world how much you love RefRunner at the RefRunner store! I wanted a shirt, and now you can have one too!