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Open Paper as Your Citation Manager

Save hours of manual citation work with automatic DOI extraction and one-click citation generation. Focus on your research, not formatting.

If you've ever spent 30 minutes hunting down a DOI, manually formatting a citation, or wrestling with citation styles, you know the pain. Citation management is one of those necessary evils of academic work—essential, but time-consuming and tedious.

What if your citation manager could do the heavy lifting for you?

Automatic DOI Extraction: The Foundation

When you upload a paper to Open Paper, something powerful happens behind the scenes. Our system automatically extracts DOI (Digital Object Identifier) information from your papers. This helps us craft accurate, effortless citations.

The moment your paper finishes processing, you have access to properly formatted citation data, including:

• Journal names and publication venues
• Publication dates
• Author information
• DOI links for easy reference

This automatic extraction means you never have to manually copy-paste metadata from publisher websites or databases again. The system does the work for you, saving you precious time.

One-Click Citation Generation

Once your paper's DOI is extracted, generating citations becomes incredibly simple. From anywhere in Open Paper—from your paper view or directly from the library—you can click the "Cite" button and get a ready-to-use citation.

The citation is immediately available in your clipboard, ready to paste into your manuscript, thesis, or research notes. This seamless workflow eliminates the constant context switching that breaks research momentum.

Project Bibliographies

Here's where Open Paper goes beyond traditional citation managers. When you're working on a project that includes multiple papers, you get an automatic bibliography.

Every paper you add to your project contributes to a living bibliography that stays up-to-date as your research evolves. No more final-hour panic trying to track down all the sources you cited throughout your project. Your bibliography grows organically with your work.

This feature is especially powerful for creating annotated bibliographies. Since your highlights and notes are stored alongside each paper, you can easily pull both the citation and your personal insights into one document. Your annotations about methodology, key findings, or critical thoughts become readily accessible when you need them, making the annotated bibliography process much more streamlined than traditional methods.

When Things Don't Go Perfectly

We'd be lying if we said the DOI extraction is perfect every time. Occasionally, especially with older papers or unusual formatting, the automatic extraction might fail or return incomplete data.

When this happens, you might see placeholder text like "[Source Placeholder]" in fields such as journal name or source information. This is your cue that the automatic system needs a little help.

But even these "imperfections" save you time. Instead of starting from scratch, you're simply filling in the gaps. You still have:

• The paper uploaded and processed
• Basic citation information extracted
• The framework in place to complete the citation

A quick manual edit beats hunting down every detail from scratch.

For older papers in your library, you can try opening the paper reader and then going back to the citation generator. Sometimes, this triggers a re-attempt at DOI extraction, pulling in more complete metadata.

Time-Saving Napkin Math

Let's do some crude math:

Traditional workflow:

• Find paper: 2 minutes
• Hunt down DOI: 5 minutes (sometimes much longer)
• Format citation: 3 minutes
• Add to bibliography: 2 minutes
• Total: 12 minutes per paper

Open Paper workflow:

• Upload paper: 30 seconds
• Click "Cite": 5 seconds
• Paste citation: 2 seconds
• Total: 37 seconds per paper

For a literature review with 20 papers, that's a saving of nearly 4 hours. That's time you can spend actually reading, thinking, and writing rather than managing administrative tasks.

Beyond Time Management: Better Research

The real value isn't just in the time saved—it's in the research quality improvement. When citation friction disappears, you're more likely to:

• Cite sources promptly and accurately
• Build comprehensive bibliographies
• Track your research lineage
• Maintain academic integrity without the hassle

Good citations become a natural byproduct of your workflow, not a separate chore to dread.

Automate the Busywork

Ready to reclaim hours of your research time? Upload your next paper to Open Paper and experience the difference that automatic DOI extraction and one-click citations can make.

Your research deserves your focus. Leave the citation busywork to us.

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Have questions about citation management or run into issues with DOI extraction? We're here to help you make the most of your research workflow. Message me at saba at openpaper.ai for any assistance.