RIS is a standardized tag format developed by Research Information Systems, Incorporated (the format name refers to the company) to enable citation programs to exchange data.
It is supported by a number of reference managers

Reference management software

Reference management software, citation management software or personal bibliographic management software is software for scholars and authors to use for recording and utilising bibliographic citations . Once a citation has been recorded, it can be used time and again in generating bibliographies,...

. Many digital libraries, like IEEE Xplore

IEEE Xplore

IEEE Xplore is a scholarly research database that indexes, abstracts, and provides full-text for articles and papers on computer science, electrical engineering and electronics. The database mainly covers material from IEEE and IET. The IEEE Xplore database contains over two million...

, Scopus

Scopus

Scopus, officially named SciVerse Scopus, is a bibliographic database containing abstracts and citations for academic journal articles. It covers nearly 18,000 titles from over 5,000 international publishers, including coverage of 16,500 peer-reviewed journals in the scientific, technical, medical,...

, the ACM Portal

ACM Portal

The ACM Portal is an online service of the Association for Computer Machinery. Its core are two main sections: ACM Digital Library , and the Guide to Computing Literature....

, ScienceDirect

ScienceDirect

ScienceDirect is one of the largest online collections of published scientific research in the world. It is operated by the publisher Elsevier and contains nearly 10 million articles from over 2,500 journals and over 6,000 e-books, reference works, book series and handbooks issued by Elsevier...

, and SpringerLink

Springer Science+Business Media

- Selected publications :* Encyclopaedia of Mathematics* Ergebnisse der Mathematik und ihrer Grenzgebiete * Graduate Texts in Mathematics * Grothendieck's Séminaire de géométrie algébrique...

, can export citations in this format.

Format

The RIS file format

File format

A file format is a particular way that information is encoded for storage in a computer file.Since a disk drive, or indeed any computer storage, can store only bits, the computer must have some way of converting information to 0s and 1s and vice-versa. There are different kinds of formats for...

 — two letters, two spaces and a dash — is a tagged

Tag (metadata)

In online computer systems terminology, a tag is a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information . This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching...

 format for expressing bibliographic citation

Citation

Broadly, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source . More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated alphanumeric expression Broadly, a citation is a reference to a published or unpublished source (not always the original source). More precisely, a citation is an abbreviated...

s. According to the specifications, the lines must end by the ASCII

ASCII

The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...

 carriage return

Carriage return

Carriage return, often shortened to return, refers to a control character or mechanism used to start a new line of text.Originally, the term "carriage return" referred to a mechanism or lever on a typewriter...

 and line feed characters. Note that this is the convention on Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

, while in other contemporary operating systems, particularly Unix

Unix

Unix is a multitasking, multi-user computer operating system originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs, including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Brian Kernighan, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna...

, end of line

Newline

In computing, a newline, also known as a line break or end-of-line marker, is a special character or sequence of characters signifying the end of a line of text. The name comes from the fact that the next character after the newline will appear on a new line—that is, on the next line below the...

 is typically marked by line feed only.

Example record

This is an example of how the article "Claude E. Shannon. A mathematical theory of communication. Bell System Technical Journal, 27:379–423, July 1948" would be expressed in the RIS file format:

TY  - JOUR

AU  - Shannon,Claude E.

PY  - 1948/07//

TI  - A Mathematical Theory of Communication

JO  - Bell System Technical Journal

SP  - 379

EP  - 423

VL  - 27

ER  -

Tags

Excerpt of main RIS tags. Except for TY and ER, order of tags is free (for a comprehensive matrix of tags and reference types please submit a support request on the EndNote or Reference Manager web site for "Creating a Direct Export Link").

TY  - Type of reference (must be the first tag)

A2  - Secondary Author (each author on its own line preceded by the tag)

A3  - Tertiary Author (each author on its own line preceded by the tag)

A4  - Subsidiary Author (each author on its own line preceded by the tag)

AB  - Abstract

AD  - Author Address

AN  - Accession Number

AU  - Author (each author on its own line preceded by the tag)

C1  - Custom 1

C2  - Custom 2

C3  - Custom 3

C4  - Custom 4

C5  - Custom 5

C6  - Custom 6

C7  - Custom 7

C8  - Custom 8

CA  - Caption

CN  - Call Number

CY  - Place Published

DA  - Date

DB  - Name of Database

DO  - DOI

DP  - Database Provider

EP  - End Page

ET  - Edition

IS  - Number

J2  - Alternate Title (this field is used for the abbreviated title of a book or journal name)

KW  - Keywords (keywords should be entered each on its own line preceded by the tag)

L1  - File Attachments (this is a link to a local file on the users system not a URL link)

L4  - Figure (this is also meant to be a link to a local file on the users's system and not a URL link)

LA  - Language

LB  - Label

M1  - Number

M3  - Type of Work

N1  - Notes

NV  - Number of Volumes

OP  - Original Publication

PB  - Publisher

PY  - Year

RI  - Reviewed Item

RN  - Research Notes

RP  - Reprint Edition

SE  - Section

SN  - ISBN/ISSN

SP  - Start Page

ST  - Short Title

T2  - Secondary Title

T3  - Tertiary Title

TA  - Translated Author

TI  - Title

TT  - Translated Title

UR  - URL

VL  - Volume

Y2  - Access Date

ER  - End of Reference (must be the last tag)

Type of reference

Type of reference preceded by the TY - tag can abbreviated as follows:

ABST  - Abstract

ADVS  - Audiovisual material

AGGR  - Aggregated Database

ANCIENT - Ancient Text

ART   - Art Work

BILL  - Bill

BLOG  - Blog

BOOK  - Whole book

CASE  - Case

CHAP  - Book chapter

CHART - Chart

CLSWK - Classical Work

COMP  - Computer program

CONF  - Conference proceeding

CPAPER - Conference paper

CTLG  - Catalog

DATA  - Data file

DBASE - Online Database

DICT  - Dictionary

EBOOK - Electronic Book

ECHAP - Electronic Book Section

EDBOOK - Edited Book

EJOUR - Electronic Article

ELEC  - Web Page

ENCYC - Encyclopedia

EQUA  - Equation

FIGURE - Figure

GEN   - Generic

GOVDOC - Government Document

GRANT - Grant

HEAR  - Hearing

ICOMM - Internet Communication

INPR  - In Press

JFULL - Journal (full)

JOUR  - Journal

LEGAL - Legal Rule or Regulation

MANSCPT - Manuscript

MAP   - Map

MGZN  - Magazine article

MPCT  - Motion picture

MULTI - Online Multimedia

MUSIC - Music score

NEWS  - Newspaper

PAMP  - Pamphlet

PAT   - Patent

PCOMM - Personal communication

RPRT  - Report

SER   - Serial publication

SLIDE - Slide

SOUND - Sound recording

STAND - Standard

STAT  - Statute

THES  - Thesis/Dissertation

UNPB  - Unpublished work

VIDEO - Video recording

External links

• file specification from Reference Manager
• file specification from Adept Scientific in text and PDF