I often end up wanting to send someone a reference that I have in JabRef. We usually do this in a form similar to what you find on the publisher’s site under “cite this” (e.g. J. Phys. Chem. A 2018, 122, 2598−2603). So it would be nice if I was able to copy such a summary from JabRef instead of having to open the PDF or the publisher’s website to find the String I can copy&paste.
Hello Robert,
In recent versions of JabRef, you can copy the preview (right-click “Copy preview” or Ctrl+Shift+C).
Does it help?
Cheers.
JabRef is helping you on a regular basis? Please, find a way of giving back.
Thanks for the hint. Unfortunately the preview is way too verbose for my purposes as it contains the full title and also the abstract. I am really looking for a short and concise one-liner somewhat similar to the example I gave.
I do not think this is possible in JabRef right away.
But you can:
- select and copy part of the preview.
- redefine the preview (you can even have different preview formats and switch between them). See Entry preview setup - JabRef
Cheers.
Yeah I thought so. Thus the feature request 
Copying from the preview is actually a good workaround. I usually like keeping the preview closed while browsing but opening it and copying from it is certainly possible.
It’d be nice to achieve this via the copy context menu entry though
Changing the preview just for that is not a good option for me though, since I do like the preview as it is inside JabRef.
I think your wish is not implemented straight forward, but your aim can be achieved quiet easily:
Either:
- Customize your preview
- you can leave the existing preview unchanged and add a separate line with your citation pattern. That is also my workflow.
or
- you create a new preview with your custom citation pattern. You can quickly switch between both with [F9]. So you need just to hit F9, (Ctrl+Shift+C) and F9 for the whole process.
These are actually very neat ideas. Thanks you! 