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RIS File Format

General Information
 An RIS file is a plain text file that can contain multiple references. RIS files can be exported from reference software such as EndNote and Reference Manager. Each reference is composed of a variable number of fields; and each field is preceded by a six-character label or "tag." Some tags are specific only to certain reference types. Each tag must be in a specific format, and certain other rules apply to all tags.

Supported Reference Types

Currently, the RIS upload functionality of ResearcherID.com accepts the following reference types (TY):

Supported Tags for Each Reference Type

Currently, the RIS upload functionality of ResearcherID.com accepts the following RIS tags (e.g., AU) for the reference types (e.g., Journal) listed.

Note: The text entries in the body of the table (e.g., Author, Pub Year, Title, etc.) are the field labels that will be displayed in your Publication List for the data contained within the associated tag.

  Reference Types
Journal Article
(JOUR)		 Patents
(PAT)		 Book
(BOOK)		 Thesis
(THES)		 Conference Proceedings
(CONF)		 Book chapter
(CHAP)		 Generic
(GEN)
RIS
Tags		 TY JOUR PAT BOOK THES CONF CHAP GEN
AU or A1 Author Inventor Editor Author Author Author Author
PY or Y1 Pub Year Year Pub Year Year Year of Conference Year Year
TI or T1 Title           Title
BT     Title   Conference Name Secondary Title  
CT   Title   Title Title Title  
SP Pages Pages Number of Pages Number of Pages Pages Pages Pages
VL Volume   Volume   Volume Volume Volume
IS Issue Patent Number         Issue
JF or JO Journal            

Tags in an RIS file are six-characters, in the format:

Character 1 Uppercase alphabetic character, specific to each field type.
Character 2 Uppercase alphabetic or numeric character, specific to each field type.
Characters 3 and 4 Spaces (ANSI 32)
Character 5 Dash (ANSI 45)
Character 6 Space (ANSI 32)

Each tag and its contents must be on a separate line, preceded by a "carriage return/line feed" (ANSI 13 10).

Except for the first tag of each reference, which must be "TY  - " (type of reference) and the last tag of each reference, which must be "ER  - " (end of reference), the tags within each reference can be in any order.

Refer to http://www.refman.com/support/risformat_intro.asp for more information about the RIS file format.

Sample Reference
Here is a sample reference from an RIS file. An RIS file can contain multiple references. Refer to http://www.refman.com/support/risformat_intro.asp for more information and samples.

TY  - JOUR
A1  - Baldwin,S.A.
A1  - Fugaccia,I.
A1  - Brown,D.R.
A1  - Brown,L.V.
A1  - Scheff,S.W.
T1  - Blood-brain barrier breach following cortical contusion in the rat
JO  - Journal of Neurosurgery
Y1  - 1996
VL  - 85
SP  - 476
EP  - 481
ER  -

Possible Errors
The following scenarios will result in the entire RIS file being rejected:

  1. File is in binary format.
  2. Tag syntaxes are incorrect.
  3. TY and ER tags are not present for each record.
  4. TY is not the first tag for a record.
  5. ER is not the last tag for a record.
  6. Tags and its contents are not preceded by a “carriage return/line feed.”
  7. Asterisk (character 42) is present in AU and JF tags.
  8. A record contains only TY and ER tags.
  9. All tags in a record are <blank>.
Thomson