A .BIB file contains a list of bibliographic citations in BibTeX formatting. .BIB files are used with LaTeX documents to make bibliographies. The visual formatting comes from LaTeX. So .BIB files may look different in different LaTeX apps. BibTeX manages bibliographies for LaTeX documents. It stores them separately from the documents, often in .BIB files. These include books, articles, papers, and reports.
.BIB files help cite sources in documents. The bibtex program can create them when writing in LaTeX. Or use LaTeX’s \bibliography command. These files organize data like authors, titles, and publishers. This simplifies citing sources.
BibTeX was created in 1985. It formats bibliographies consistently. It separates content from style like LaTeX does. The latest BibTeX version was in 1988. But variants like BibTeXU and CL-BibTeX exist now.
A .BIB file holds text. It has entries with author, title, year, and more. Entries are comma-separated. Lines split entries. Programs like BibTeX open .BIB files. Text editors view the contents. Managers like Zotero export to BibTeX format.
