How can I find a bibtex entry for an article?

Question

For example:

Albin, S.L., Barrett, J., Ito, D., Mueller, J.E., 1990. A queueing network analysis of a health center. Queueing Systems 7, 51–61.

Answer 1

@article{albin1990,
  title={A queueing network analysis of a health center},
  author={Albin, Susan L and Barrett, Jeffrey and Ito, David and Mueller, John E},
  journal={Queueing Systems},
  volume={7},
  pages={51--61},
  year={1990},
}

A quick search with Google Scholar will give you this kind of information.

Answer 2

My procedure is normally:

1. find the DOI of the paper
2. use doi2bib

In the example case, if you you put the article in google, you have the following result (first result for me):

https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=98435

from where you get the DOI; then you go to http://www.doi2bib.org/#/doi, put the doi number there, and voilá:

@article{Albin1990,
  doi = {10.1007/bf01158785},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01158785},
  year  = {1990},
  month = {mar},
  publisher = {Springer Nature},
  volume = {7},
  number = {1},
  pages = {51--61},
  author = {Susan L. Albin and Jeffrey Barrett and David Ito and John E. Mueller},
  title = {A queueing network analysis of a health center},
  journal = {Queueing Systems}
}

After that, you have to check that the entry is ok (errors are possible and somewhat common), and modify for your needs (for example, y normally change the key, add the abstract if I can, add some personal entries...)

Answer 3

1. Open JabRef
2. Under Web Search, select a database, as "Google Scholar".
3. Add some keywords as "Albin health center", push Fetch
4. Deselect all and check that with the albin1990queueing
5. OK to add to the current BibTeX database.
6. Edit the new entry to check that is OK.

From some sources often the imported references are really wrong. In this cases could be better have a try with another search engine before to start editing every reference.

Answer 4

As a staring point, you can visit the website of the journal https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01158785 and download the .bib file from there

This will give you

@Article{Albin1990,
author="Albin, Susan L.
and Barrett, Jeffrey
and Ito, David
and Mueller, John E.",
title="A queueing network analysis of a health center",
journal="Queueing Systems",
year="1990",
volume="7",
number="1",
pages="51--61",
abstract="This paper shows how a queueing network model helped to uncover the causes of delay in a health center appointment clinic. Patients, clerks, technicians, doctors and nurses agreed that the clerical registration area was the major bottleneck in the system. Our first reaction was to simulate the system with special attention on the complex registration procedure. Time constraints on data collection and program development led us to a queueing network model and QNA, a software tool for analyzing queueing networks developed by Whitt. The queueing analysis showed the registration area was not the bottleneck and we conjectured that delays were due to scheduling problems. A preliminary trial in the clinic of a modified appointment system showed promise with a 20 minute reduction in average time in the system (based on a small sample). Although there were significant differences between features of the real system and assumptions in the queueing network model, the queueing network model yielded insight into the operation of the appointment clinic.",
issn="1572-9443",
doi="10.1007/BF01158785",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF01158785"
}

Now you have to manually check if the information is correct as there are sometimes errors in these automatically generated files. Some points to check:

• are the authors spelled correctly (sometimes accents etc. are missing)
• is it the correct type of publication (sometimes chapters in a book are incorrectly given as @article)
• is there -- in the range of the page numbers?
• Acronyms in titles are error prone. Sometimes there are additional spaces between the letter, sometimes periods are missing, sometimes capitalisation is wrong ...