Convert RIS to PDF

RIS files are text file that contain bibliographic citations and references and are often utilized by reference management software like EndNote, Zotero, or Mendeley. With these users can add citatitons and references to their documents.

Considering that RIS format is text based, any text editor with print function can be used for this via virtual PDF printer and the same goes for various reference managers. This is ris to pdf conversion in the traditional file conversion sense, but not something some users might be after.

But it might very well be possible that users searching for ris to pdf conversion are instead looking for a way to add citations to already existing PDF documents, which is not really a straightforward process and requires a bit of work.

Adding bibliographic citations from RIS file to PDF document

You cannot add or import entries from .ris files directly, but you can do this with Microsoft Word document in conjuction with one of the reference managers. Thus, what you need to do first, is to turn your PDF file into Microsoft Word document, ideally .docx, in order to preserve most of the formatting and the XML nature of the document.

You can find numerous pdf to word conversion solutions, but the latest versions of Word allow direct opening of PDF documents and this is exactly what you need. Once opened, you can use bibliographic references tools to add citations from .ris files to your document, a topic well-covered under the ris to doc conversion entry.

Once you have finished the work on your document and applied any citations or references, you can again export or save your document to PDF format.