bib-checker

bib-checker is a command-line tool that validates .bib file citations against InspireHEP and suggests or applies corrections.

What it does

  1. Check — looks up every citation key against InspireHEP by texkey and flags entries that are missing or have mismatched fields (doi, eprint, year, title).
  2. Suggest — searches InspireHEP for replacement candidates for every flagged entry.
  3. Fix — applies InspireHEP canonical values to mismatched entries and writes a new .bib file with still-problematic entries separated at the end for manual review.

Quick example

# Step 1 — check all entries and write a results file
bib-checker check paper.bib

# Step 2 — find replacement candidates and generate an HTML report
bib-checker suggest results.json --html

# Step 3 — apply fixes; outputs paper_fixed.bib
bib-checker fix paper.bib results.json

Open report.html in your browser for a visual summary of every flagged entry and its suggested replacement.

Design goals

  • Zero friction — a single pip install and three commands are all you need.
  • Non-destructive — the source .bib file is never modified in-place.
  • Transparent — every suggested change is shown as a diff before anything is written.
  • Minimal dependencies — bibtexparser, requests, and rich; no heavy frameworks.

Next steps