JabRef 4.2 Released

After more than four months of hard work and following our work on the JabCon, we are proud to release JabRef 4.2!

We worked to fix a lot of freezes and performance issues, for example when searching or opening the entry editor. Some other performance improvements are related to journal abbreviations.

Of course, we also implemented some cool new features, for example the PDF XMP Import/Export in DublinCore format. The DublinCore format is now the only metadata format which JabRef supports in PDFs. The previously used custom format was dropped in favor of the DublinCore format.

Additionally, based on a feature request in our forum, JabRef is now able to import files in Endnote XML format. Furthermore, we improved the export of the address and location fields to the corresponding MS Office XML fields. If the address field does not contain a comma, it is treated as single value and exported to the field city. #1750, comment For more details refer to the field mapping help page

To avoid confusion for JabRef newcomers, we renamed the Review tab in the entry editor to Comments. Existing entries having a Review field will be automatically migrated to the new field Comments.

Despite fixing some existing fetchers, e.g., the IEEE fetcher now uses the securely encrypted https, we implemented support for the oaDOI fetcher. JabRef is now able to download full text articles for more than 90 million open-access articles. Also, we fixed and extended the RIS import functionality to cover more fields.

Unfortunately, JabRef binaries are still not digitally signed. We are in the process of obtaining a new code signing certificate from Comodo. In the meantime, please check the installations instructions for your Operating System (especially MacOs), in case JabRef cannot be started.

Here is an excerpt of our full changelog.

Changed

• We changed the default dialog option when removing a file link from an entry.
• We improved file saving so that hard links are now preserved when a save is performed #2633 The new default removes the linked file from the entry instead of deleting the file from disk. #3679
• We changed one default of Cleanup entries dialog: Per default, the PDF are not moved to the default file directory anymore. #3619
• Added “.” (any file type) to the Import File Filter Dialog. #3757
• We added the option to download linked URLs in the context menu in the entry editor.
• We added another CLI functionality for reading and writing metadata to PDFs. (see https://github.com/JabRef/jabref/pull/3756 and see http://help.jabref.org/en/CommandLine)
• Renamed the Review Tab into Comments Tab
• We now show a small notification icon in the entry editor when we detect data inconsistency or other problems. #3145

Bug Fixes

• We fixed several performance problems with the management of journal abbreviations #3323
• We fixed an issue where changing the type of an entry did not update the label in the tool bar of the entry editor and the contents of the currently visible entry editor tab
• We fixed an issue where pressing space caused the cursor to jump to the start of the text field. #3471
• We fixed an issue where pressing del in the file field would trigger the delete dialog a second file, if the first file is deleted #3926
• We fixed an issue where odd linked files could not be selected in the entry editor. #3639

Removed

• We removed the Look and Feels from JGoodies, because the open source version is not compatible with Java 9.

Download Links

You can get the 4.2 version at Fosshub - or at the release section at GitHub.