reference-shortener

Shortens a LaTeX paper's references until it fits a page count.

The tool compiles the paper with latexmk, then applies cleanups to the cited references — recompiling after each step and stopping as soon as the target page count is reached:

1. location (and BibTeX address) → cleared — few styles print it, so it is the cheapest information to lose
2. DOIs → normalized (no https://doi.org/ prefixes) — a cleanup any nice paper wants anyway
3. URLs → cleaned up (redirect wrappers unwrapped, escapes decoded) — likewise
4. Author lists → first author + "et al."
5. month → removed
6. Journal names → standard abbreviations (JabRef's bundled list)
7. DOIs → shortened to the 10/xxx form (via shortdoi.org) — the very last resort, since not everyone likes short DOIs

The referenced .bib file(s) are rewritten with the smallest set of cleanups that reaches the target — a paper that already fits is left untouched.

Built on jablib, JabRef's core library.

Requirements

• JBang
• A TeX distribution with latexmk — or Docker (automatic fallback to the Island of TeX texlive/texlive image)
• Network access is only needed for the last-resort DOI-shortening step (shortdoi.org); it is skipped gracefully when offline. Everything else runs without a network.

Usage

# one-off
jbang reference-shortener@koppor/reference-shortener paper.tex --pages 6

# or install as a command
jbang app install reference-shortener@koppor/reference-shortener
reference-shortener paper.tex --pages 6

Without --pages, the target is one page fewer than the paper's current length. --output shortened.bib writes the result elsewhere instead of overwriting (single-.bib papers only).

Use as an agent skill

This repository ships a SKILL.md, so a coding agent can install it as a skill from skills.sh:

npx skills add koppor/reference-shortener

See the skill page at skills.sh/koppor/reference-shortener.

Faster startup

Two independent knobs, both optional:

• Native jbang launcher — run jbang itself as a native binary, skipping the JVM boot on every invocation. Enable once (add to your shell profile):

  export JBANG_USE_NATIVE=true

  jbang downloads a native build of itself on the next run. This speeds up the jbang command in general, not just this tool.

• Native build of this tool — the biggest win for repeated use; runs without a JVM at all:

  jbang app install --native reference-shortener@koppor/reference-shortener

  Building natively requires a GraalVM JDK with native-image (e.g. JBANG_JDK_VENDOR=graalvm_community jbang jdk install 25).

Native binary

Pre-built native binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows are attached to each release and to every Binaries workflow run (as artifacts) — download one and run it directly, no JBang or JVM required.

To build one yourself from a checkout:

jbang export native --output reference-shortener ReferenceShortener.java

Versioning

This project adheres to Semantic Versioning; see CHANGELOG.md (kept in Keep a Changelog format, linted with heylogs).

License

MIT