RIS Format
A standardized plain-text file format for exchanging bibliographic records between databases and citation managers.
RIS is a standardized, plain-text file format for bibliographic data, used to move reference records between databases, journals, and citation managers. Each record is a series of two-letter tags, such as TY for the reference type, AU for author, and PY for publication year, ending with an ER tag. Nearly every academic database and reference tool can export or import RIS files, which makes it a common exchange format across otherwise incompatible systems.
Practically, RIS is how you get search results into your citation manager without retyping. When a database offers an export button, RIS is usually among the options and imports cleanly into most tools. During a thesis literature search, exporting whole result sets as RIS files keeps your screening and reference records complete, but check imported entries, because tag mapping errors can garble author names or dates.
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