Free online ODT to RIS converter

What the ODT format is

ODT is the OpenDocument Text format, an open XML-based word-processing format standardized by OASIS. LibreOffice Writer, Apache OpenOffice Writer, Collabora Office, and some other office suites create ODT files. They commonly contain paragraphs, tables, images, footnotes, citations, and bibliography sections.

An ODT file stores document layout and content, not a guaranteed machine-readable bibliography database. A reference list that looks structured to a reader may be only formatted text without author, title, year, journal, and identifier fields.

What the RIS format is

RIS is a plain-text interchange format for bibliographic records. Reference managers and library systems use tags such as TY for record type, AU for author, TI for title, JO for journal, PY for publication year, DO for DOI, and ER to end a record.

RIS is useful for importing references into Zotero, EndNote, Citavi, RefWorks, and institutional library tools. It is small, editable, and designed to preserve citation metadata rather than page layout, images, or general document formatting.

How to actually convert ODT to RIS

For a quick conversion, use the free converter on 101convert.com:

1. Open the ODT-to-RIS converter on 101convert.com.
2. Select an .odt file from your device.
3. Choose RIS as the output format and start the conversion.
4. Download the resulting .ris file.
5. Import it into the target reference manager using its File → Import command, then select RIS as the import format if the program asks.

If the ODT contains ordinary prose rather than structured references, extract and check the bibliography first. In LibreOffice, open the file, copy only the reference list into a separate document, and use File → Save As to create a plain-text working copy. A citation manager is usually more accurate than automatic conversion: enter or import each reference there, then export it through a menu such as File → Export Library and select RIS.

For manual repair, open the generated .ris file in a plain-text editor and check that every record has a type line such as TY - JOUR, one or more author lines, a title, and an ending ER - line. Keep one bibliographic record together and separate records with their own ER marker.

Quality and compatibility limitations

ODT-to-RIS conversion cannot reliably recover metadata that the ODT does not explicitly store. Styled text, footnotes, numbered references, hyperlinks, and manually typed citations may be interpreted incorrectly or omitted; images and page formatting have no equivalent in RIS.

Review author order, initials, publication year, journal title, volume, issue, page range, DOI, URL, and reference type after import. Duplicate references and incorrect types such as treating a book as a journal article are common when a formatted bibliography is converted by pattern matching.

For confidential manuscripts or unpublished research, use a local editor or citation manager instead of uploading the ODT. If the original references came from a database, exporting that database directly to RIS preserves substantially more metadata than converting the surrounding document.