Free online ODS to RIS converter

Reference managers commonly accept RIS records when importing citations, while source bibliographic data may be stored in an ODS spreadsheet. Conversion works best when the spreadsheet has one citation per row and clearly labeled fields.

What ODS contains

ODS (OpenDocument Spreadsheet) is the spreadsheet format used by LibreOffice Calc and Apache OpenOffice Calc. It stores data in worksheets with rows, columns, formulas, and formatting; spreadsheets can also be opened by other office software, including Microsoft Excel.

What RIS contains

RIS is a plain-text exchange format for bibliographic records, used to transfer references between citation databases and reference managers such as EndNote and Zotero. Each record uses tagged lines—for example, TY for reference type, TI for title, and AU for author—and ends with ER. It carries citation fields, not spreadsheet layout or formulas.

How to convert ODS to RIS

Online on 101convert.com

1. Open the ODS-to-RIS converter page and upload the spreadsheet. The page allows batch conversion; its per-file size limit is shown there.
2. Choose RIS as the output format and start the conversion.
3. Download the converted file or files and check that the citation fields are present.

Offline with desktop software

For a reproducible local conversion, use Python with pandas and its ODS reader, odfpy. This example expects a sheet with column headings title, authors, year, journal, and doi; put multiple authors in one cell separated by semicolons. It writes journal-article records.

1. Install Python and the required packages: python -m pip install pandas odfpy.
2. Save the following as ods_to_ris.py beside references.ods, then run python ods_to_ris.py.

import pandas as pd

df = pd.read_excel("references.ods", engine="odf").fillna("")

def value(row, key):
    return str(row.get(key, "")).strip()

with open("references.ris", "w", encoding="utf-8", newline="\n") as out:
    for row in df.to_dict("records"):
        title = value(row, "title")
        authors = [a.strip() for a in value(row, "authors").split(";") if a.strip()]
        if not title and not authors:
            continue
        out.write("TY  - JOUR\n")
        if title:
            out.write(f"TI  - {title}\n")
        for author in authors:
            out.write(f"AU  - {author}\n")
        for column, tag in (("year", "PY"), ("journal", "JO"), ("doi", "DO")):
            field = value(row, column)
            if field:
                out.write(f"{tag}  - {field}\n")
        out.write("ER  -\n\n")

Quality and limitations

RIS requires bibliographic fields, so a general-purpose spreadsheet does not convert into complete references automatically: column names and values must match the fields you need. The script maps only title, authors, year, journal, and DOI, and labels every record as a journal article; edit the mapping for other reference types or fields. Check the resulting records in the destination reference manager, especially author separators and missing values.