GetMRef

GetMRef is used for getting the references links to MathSciNet from BatchMref

Download .zip Download .tar.gz View On GitHub

GetMRef

Table of Contents

About

GetMRef adds an MR number1 for each given bibliography reference that has been found in the American Mathematical Society Mathematical Reviews (AMS MR) database2. Additionally, matches found in the database can be saved in one of 4 possible formats: tex, bibtex, amsrefs and html. Therefore, one can check if user provided references contain full and correct data. Also GetMRef can be used as a reference formatting tool (user citation keys from original references will be inserted).

GetMRef sends requests to the database through AMS BatchMref tool3.
One can send requests directly using AMS MRef tool with graphical interface4.

Usage

To run GetMRef on Windows OS:

getmref.exe <input_file>

To see all options with short description:

getmref.exe --help

On Linux or Mac OS run the included Python script:

python3 getmref.py <input file>

or

python3 getmref.py --help

(please see Python script requirements section below).

Python script requirements

Python script can be run directly, for that Python 3.9 or newer is required5.

For an option --enc=auto the Universal Encoding Detector library6, written by Mark Pilgrim and maintained by Dan Blanchard, is required.

Input data

Input has to be a file containing bibliography references without MR number. References with MR number already present will be skipped.

Only the following reference formats are recognized:

  • Basic LaTeX \bibitem[<optional info>]{<cite_key>} <reference text>, e.g.,
\begin{thebibliography}{9}

\bibitem{lamport94}
    Leslie Lamport,
    \emph{\LaTeX: a document preparation system},
    Addison Wesley, Massachusetts,
    2nd edition,
    1994.

\end{thebibliography}
  • BibTeX @<reference_type>{<cite_key>, <key_n>=<value_n>}, e.g.,
@article{greenwade93,
    author  = {"George D. Greenwade"},
    title   = {"The {C}omprehensive {T}ex {A}rchive {N}etwork ({CTAN})"},
    year    = {"1993"},
    journal = {"TUGBoat"},
    volume  = {"14"},
    number  = {"3"},
    pages   = {"342--351"},
    }
  • AMSRefs \bib{<cite_key>}{<reference_type>}{<key_n>=<value_n>}, e.g.,
\begin{bibdiv}
\begin{biblist}

\bib{Sokal96}{article}{
    title={Trangressing the boundaries},
    subtitle={Toward a transformative hermeneutics of quantum gravity},
    author={Sokal, Alan},
    journal={Social Text},
    volume={46/47},
    date={1996},
    pages={217--252}
    }

\end{biblist}
\end{bibdiv}

An input file may contain all these reference formats at once. Reference format type is determined automatically and the resulting MR number is formatted and inserted according to this type.

By default, at first GetMRef looks for thebibliography or biblist environment and processes only the references inside this environment. If no bibliography reference has been found inside an environment or an environment hasn’t been found at all, all references found in the file will be processed. The first step may be skipped using the --nobibenv option.

User may provide an appropriate encoding for the input file reading with an option --enc=<encoding>. By default, it is set to latin1. In order to automatically determine the encoding, this option can be set to auto. For this to work the Universal Encoding Detector library5, written by Mark Pilgrim and maintained by Dan Blanchard, is required.

Requesting the AMS MR database

User provided references are sent to https://mathscinet.ams.org/batchmref as XML string:

<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8"?>
<mref_batch>
  <mref_item outtype="amsref|bibtex|html|tex">
    <inref>string</inref>
    <myid>1</myid>
  </mref_item>
  ...
  <mref_item outtype="amsref|bibtex|html|tex">
    <inref>string</inref>
    <myid>99</myid>
  </mref_item>
</mref_batch>

One request to the AMS MR database can contain up to 100 references (mref_item elements). User may use an option --itemno=<integer> (default is set to 100) to (only) decrease this limit. This value does not limit how many references can be in the input file.

The result of the request is the same XML string with the mrid, outref and matches fields appended for each mref_item:

<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8"?>
<mref_batch>
  <mref_item outtype="amsref|bibtex|html|tex">
    <inref>string</inref>
    <myid>1</myid>
    <mrid>string</mrid>
    <outref>string</outref>
    <matches>0|1</matches>
  </mref_item>
  ...
  <mref_item outtype="amsref|bibtex|html|tex">
    <inref>string</inref>
    <myid>99</myid>
    <mrid>string</mrid>
    <outref>string</outref>
    <matches>0|1</matches>
  </mref_item>
</mref_batch>

While testing GetMRef, it has been noticed that in order to get correct results, there is a need for a short pause after each query to the AMS MR database. Otherwise many references that exist in the database will be returned as not found. Also, there is a possibility that fields with new information will be appended to a different mref_item. According to http://www.ams.org/robots.txt there is a “Crawl-Delay: 10”. Tests have confirmed that 10s delay between requests to the AMD MR database is an optimal choice and it is the default setting. In order to change the delay time, one can use an option --wait=<integer>.

Output data

GetMRef output depends on user provided references format(s) (see the Input data section) and the requested output format.

If reference has been found in the AMS MR database, an MR number will be added to each such reference according to its original formatting in the following way:

  • \MR{<number>} for Basic LaTeX format
  • MRNUMBER={<number>} for BibTeX format
  • review={\MR{<number>}} for AMSRefs format

Additional output files will be generated according to the requested output format (use an option --format=<tex|bibtex|amsrefs|html|ims>). The AMS MR database provides the following output format types: tex, bibtex, amsrefs, html. For each format type there will be the following additional files generated, containing references in the requested format:

  • file <input_filename>.getmref.data for tex and amsrefs formats
  • file <input_filename>.getmref.html for html format

  • files <input_filename>.getmref.bib and <input_file>.getmref.aux for bibtex and ims formats. (The latter is an extension of the bibtex format.)

    Additionally user may use --bibstyle=<BibTeX style> option (default is plain), which will be inserted into generated *.aux file as \bibstyle{<BibTeX style>}. For more information please consult the BibTeX documentation.

Bug reports

Please submit bug report or feature requests at github page.

  1. https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet/help/getitem.html#findmr ↩

  2. https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet/index.html ↩

  3. https://mathscinet.ams.org/batchmref ↩

  4. https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet-mref ↩

  5. https://docs.python.org/3.9/using/index.html ↩ ↩2

  6. https://pypi.python.org/pypi/chardet ↩