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| BibExcel | |
|---|---|
| Name | BibExcel |
| Developer | Olle Persson |
| Released | 2002 |
| Latest release | 2014 |
| Programming language | C/C++ |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
| License | Freeware |
BibExcel
BibExcel is a freeware bibliometric utility created for preprocessing and analyzing bibliographic data from databases such as Web of Science, Scopus and PubMed. The tool was developed to assist researchers in bibliometrics, scientometrics and information science who work on citation analysis, co-authorship networks and co-citation studies. It is commonly used alongside visualization and network tools like Pajek, Gephi and VOSviewer in studies associated with institutions such as Clarivate, Elsevier and National Institutes of Health.
BibExcel originated as a compact command-line and graphical tool for extracting bibliographic elements such as authors, titles, affiliations and cited references from records exported by services like Web of Science, Scopus and CrossRef. It targets practitioners in bibliometrics, scientometrics and research evaluation working at universities, research centers and funding agencies including University of Gothenburg, Karolinska Institutet and European Commission. Typical outputs feed into network analysis packages such as Pajek, Gephi and statistical environments like R and Python for downstream processing and visualization. The software sits within workflows familiar to users of EndNote, Zotero and Mendeley who require citation network extraction and co-occurrence matrices.
BibExcel provides routines for parsing export formats from Web of Science, Scopus and PubMed and generating matrices for co-citation, bibliographic coupling and co-authorship analyses. It includes utilities for frequency counting, name disambiguation heuristics, and aggregation suitable for input to network tools like Pajek, Gephi and UCINET. The package supports text manipulation steps commonly applied in studies originating from Institute for Scientific Information, Royal Society reports and OECD policy analyses, enabling researchers at organizations such as Max Planck Society and Harvard University to prepare data for mapping exercises. Users exploit BibExcel routines when working with citation datasets used in journal metrics, impact studies, and mapping projects linked to journals like Nature, Science and PLoS ONE.
BibExcel reads and processes records exported in native formats from databases including Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed and bibliography managers like EndNote and RefWorks. It produces matrix files compatible with network analyzers such as Pajek and UCINET, and tabular outputs importable into R and Microsoft Excel. Interoperability supports workflows that integrate mapping tools like VOSviewer and visualization platforms like Gephi and Cytoscape for cross-disciplinary projects spanning institutions such as CNRS, Max Planck Institute and Imperial College London.
Researchers typically export records from Web of Science or Scopus and run BibExcel routines to extract cited references, author names and affiliations, then generate co-occurrence matrices for use in Pajek or Gephi. Common use cases include co-authorship network mapping in collaborations involving organizations like University of Oxford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, co-citation analyses of influential works published in Nature, Science and The Lancet, and bibliographic coupling applied to policy reports by UNESCO, World Health Organization and European Commission. The software’s text processing functions support systematic reviews and meta-analyses related to trials cataloged by ClinicalTrials.gov or indexed in PubMed Central.
BibExcel was authored by Olle Persson in the early 2000s and evolved through community use by scholars in bibliometrics and scientometrics across European and North American institutions. Its development responded to the needs expressed at conferences such as the International Conference on Scientometrics and Informetrics and in workshops organized by groups linked to ISSI and research centers like CWTS (Centre for Science and Technology Studies). Over time users integrated BibExcel into pipelines with scripting in Perl, Python and R, and interoperated with visualization tools including Pajek, Gephi and VOSviewer. While no formal commercial vendor maintained it, the tool persisted through academic adoption at institutions like Lund University and community sharing on mailing lists and academic forums.
Scholars in bibliometrics and information science have cited BibExcel in methodological descriptions accompanying mapping studies published in journals such as Journal of Informetrics, Scientometrics and Research Policy. Its impact is evident in bibliometric analyses produced by research groups at CWTS, Leiden University, University of Leiden and governmental bodies including OECD and European Commission policy units. Reviewers note its utility for preprocessing large citation datasets destined for visualization in Pajek and Gephi and for integration with statistical workflows in R and Python. The software helped standardize preprocessing steps used in comparative studies by networks of scholars at Harvard University, MIT and University of Cambridge.