Papis

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Papis is a powerful and highly extensible CLI document and bibliography manager.

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|first_glance|

With Papis, you can search your library for books and papers, add documents and notes, import and export to and from other formats, and much much more. Papis uses a human-readable and easily hackable .yaml file to store each entry's bibliographical data. It strives to be easy to use while providing a wide range of features. And for those who still want more, Papis makes it easy to write scripts that extend its features even further.

Features

• Add documents and automatically fetch their metadata.
• Search by author, title, tags, and so on.
• Synchronize your library with whatever software you're already using.
• Share your documents with colleagues without having to force some proprietary service onto them.
• Import your data from other bibliography managers.
• Export to BibTeX and other formats.
• Integrate with your editor with plugins for (Neo)vim and Emacs.
• TUIs make it easy to get a quick overview of your library.
• Use the web app when the CLI doesn't quite cut it (for example on your tablet).
• Hacking Papis is easy! Use the API to easily create your own custom Python scripts.

Quick tour

Install Papis with pip (or one of the alternatives <https://papis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html>__):

.. code:: bash

pip install papis

Let's download a couple of documents:

.. code:: bash

wget https://www.gnu.org/s/libc/manual/pdf/libc.pdf
wget https://www.ams.org/notices/201304/rnoti-p434.pdf

We can now add these to the (default) library. This will automatically query for the metadata associated with the doi.

.. code:: bash

papis add --from doi 10.1090/noti963 rnoti-p434.pdf

|add|

You can also use --set to add information:

.. code:: bash

papis add libc.pdf --set author "Sandra Loosemore" \
                   --set title "GNU C reference manual" \
                   --set year 2018 \
                   --set tags programming \
                   --confirm

Now open an attached file or edit an entry:

.. code:: bash

papis open
papis edit

|edit|

The Papis picker (set using the picktool configuration option) has helpful shortcuts to call other functionality as well (press F1 for a complete list). It can be used to open (Ctrl-o), browse (Ctrl-b) or edit (Ctrl-e) selected documents (marked with Ctrl-t).

Import your bibliography into Papis from BibTeX:

.. code:: bash

papis bibtex read mylib.bib import --all

Or export it to BibTeX:

.. code:: bash

papis export --all --format bibtex > mylib.bib

|bibtex_export|

Papis also includes a web app that you can start with:

.. code:: bash

papis serve

You can then open the indicated address (http://localhost:8888) in your browser.

|web_app|

All papis commands come with help messages:

.. code:: bash

papis -h      # General help
papis add -h  # Help with a specific command

Installation & setup

Information about installation and setup can be found in the docs <https://papis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/>__, for example in the these sections:

• Installation <https://papis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install.html>__
• Configuration <https://papis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/configuration.html>__
• Import <https://papis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/importing.html>__
• Editor integration <https://papis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/editors.html>__

Questions?

The docs <https://papis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/>__ cover Papis' features and discuss possible work flows. If you still have questions, head to our GitHub discussions <https://github.com/papis/papis/discussions>__ — we're more than happy to help. If you've found a bug, please open an issue <https://github.com/papis/papis/issues>__ and help make Papis even better!

If you're not finding a command or configuration value that shows up in the documentation in your local installation, you may just be looking at the wrong docs. You can find the documentation for the latest released version here <https://papis.readthedocs.io/en/stable/>__ and the documentation for the in-development version here <https://papis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/>__.

Reviews and blog posts

• Blog post <https://alejandrogallo.github.io/blog/posts/getting-paper-references-with-papis/>__ about getting a paper's references with papis explore.
• Blog post <https://web.archive.org/web/20250428103318/https://nicolasshu.com/zotero_and_papis.html>__ about using Papis with Zotero and Syncthing.
• GNU/Linux Switzerland wrote about Papis <https://gnulinux.ch/papis-dokumentenverwaltung-fuer-die-kommandozeile>__ (in German).
• The folks at OSTechNix wrote a review of Papis <https://www.ostechnix.com/papis-command-line-based-document-bibliography-manager>__.
• A review of Papis <https://ubunlog.com/papis-administrador-documentos/>__ by Ubunlog (in Spanish).

Contributing

Contributions are very welcome! Take a look at CONTRIBUTING.md <https://github.com/papis/papis/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md>__ for general rules and HACKING.md <https://github.com/papis/papis/blob/main/HACKING.md>__ for additional code-related information. We encourage you to also check out, contribute to, or even help maintain the other projects in the Papis ecosystem mentioned below 😉.

The Papis ecosystem

Papis has grown over the years and there are now a number of projects that extend Papis' features or integrate it with other software.

.. list-table:: :widths: 33 67 :header-rows: 1

• • Project
  • Maintained by
• • papis (core) <https://github.com/papis/papis-rofi/>__
  • Alejandro Gallo <https://alejandrogallo.github.io/>, Julian Hauser <https://github.com/jghauser>, Alex Fikl <https://github.com/alexfikl>__
• • papis-rofi <https://github.com/papis/papis-rofi/>__
  • Etn40ff <https://github.com/Etn40ff>__
• • papis-dmenu <https://github.com/papis/papis-dmenu>__
  • you?
• • papis-vim <https://github.com/papis/papis-vim>__
  • you?
• • papis.nvim <https://github.com/jghauser/papis.nvim>__
  • Julian Hauser <https://github.com/jghauser>__
• • papis-emacs <https://github.com/papis/papis.el>__
  • Alejandro Gallo <https://alejandrogallo.github.io/>, Jean-Alexandre Barszcz <https://jabarsz.cz/en/home>
• • papis-zotero <https://github.com/papis/papis-zotero>__
  • Alex Fikl <https://github.com/alexfikl>__
• • papis-libgen <https://github.com/papis/papis-zotero>__
  • you?
• • papis-firefox <https://github.com/papis/papis-firefox>__
  • wavefrontshaping <https://github.com/wavefrontshaping>__
• • papis-ask <https://github.com/jghauser/papis-ask>__ (AI for Papis)
  • Julian Hauser <https://github.com/jghauser>__

Related software

Papis isn't the only fish in the pond. You might also be interested in:

• bibman <https://codeberg.org/KMIJPH/bibman>__ (open source)
• bibiman <https://codeberg.org/lukeflo/bibiman>__ (open source)
• cobib <https://github.com/mrossinek/cobib>__ (open source)
• jabref <https://www.jabref.org/>__ (open source)
• Mendeley <https://www.mendeley.com/>__ (proprietary)
• pubs <https://github.com/pubs/pubs/>__ (open source)
• Xapers <https://finestructure.net/xapers/>__ (open source)
• Zotero <https://www.zotero.org/>__ (open source)

Thanks

We thank Irteza Rehman <https://www.irtezarehman.com/>__ for generously creating our beautiful logo.

Funding

This project is funded through NGI0 Commons Fund <https://nlnet.nl/commonsfund>, a fund established by NLnet <https://nlnet.nl> with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet <https://ngi.eu>__ program. Learn more at the NLnet project page <https://nlnet.nl/project/Papis>__.

|nlnet_logo| |nlnet_ngi0|

.. |ghbadge| image:: https://github.com/papis/papis/workflows/CI/badge.svg :target: https://github.com/papis/papis/actions?query=branch%3Amain+workflow%3ACI .. |RTD| image:: https://readthedocs.org/projects/papis/badge/?version=latest :target: http://papis.readthedocs.io/en/latest/?badge=latest .. |CodeQL| image:: https://github.com/papis/papis/workflows/CodeQL/badge.svg :target: https://github.com/papis/papis/actions?query=branch%3Amain+workflow%3ACodeQL .. |Pypi| image:: https://badge.fury.io/py/papis.svg :target: https://pypi.org/project/papis/ .. |zenodo_badge| image:: https://zenodo.org/badge/82691622.svg :target: https://zenodo.org/badge/latestdoi/82691622

.. |first_glance| image:: https://papis.github.io/images/first_glance.gif .. |edit| image:: https://papis.github.io/images/edit.gif .. |bibtex_export| image:: https://papis.github.io/images/bibtex_export.gif .. |add| image:: https://papis.github.io/images/add.gif .. |web_app| image:: htt