Export bibliography file with selected fields

I use JabRef to manage my references, and I’ve organized several hundred entries. Now, I need to export a .bib file containing approximately 50 entries for a journal publication. The journal requires specific fields for each entry type (e.g., for an article: author, title, journal, volume, year).

However, when I export the publication group to a BibTeX file, all fields (such as URL, notes, groups, keywords, etc.) are included, not just the required ones. The current “Quality > Cleanup” feature seems do the (unproportionaly more difficult) opposite of removing unnecessary fields instead of selecting only the few required ones.

I propose adding a feature that allows users to export only the necessary fields for a selected group of entries. This could be achieved by ticking required boxes in an export GUI or by setting filters based on entry types.

The maintainers or other developers might have more to say about a GUI solution or custom exports. In the absence of expertise with either of those, I use regular expressions as a workaround.

“Regular expressions” – in case you are unfamiliar – let you search for patterns, which you can use to find and remove (or find and keep) specific fields from your exported BibTeX file.

Here is an example that you could use to remove the “location” field from all entries (assuming it is not the first or last field in the entry).

^ location *=.*\},\n

You can do this one field at a time or make an expression to capture all the fields of interest at once. If you are interested and need a hand, just say so.

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