BibDesk is a bibliographic reference manager for OS X. BibDesk is designed to help organize and use bibliographic databases in BibTeX .bib format. In addition to manual typing, BibDesk lets you drag-and-drop or cut-and-paste .bib files into the bibliographic database and automatically opens files downloaded from PubMed. BibDesk also keeps track of electronic copies of literature on your computer and allows for searching your database through several keys.

BibDesk integrates well with TeX for creating citations and bibliographies. This integration includes a Citation search completion service, and drag-and-drop (cut-and-paste) support for adding citations to TeX files.

Features

• Manage references: BibDesk’s reference management begins with basic bibliographic data and goes forth to include details like the publication type, abstracts or links to web pages or local files – PDFs or any other kind – related to the publication. If desired, BibDesk will automatically move and rename these files for you.
• Find references: BibDesk’s search field lets you quickly sift through your whole bibliography by instantaneously filtering all the entries for the terms you enter. Advanced options include full text search of all the PDF files associated to your bibliography entries and ‘smart groups’ which you can set up to always show the publications matching certain keywords.
• Import: BibDesk comes with a wide range of import features. These begin with simple text files and rich BibTEX and RIS files which you may already have or can download from many scientific web sites. More advanced features are integration with online resources – which tries to extract bibliographic information from web pages – and direct access to the catalogues of libraries and other publication sites (e.g. PubMed) using protocols like Z39.50 or Entrez.
• Export: BibDesk helps you share and publish your bibliographic information. It exports to standard bibliographic formats like RIS, BibTEX or EndNote and can also provide you with a PDF file or copy rich text to the clipboard that you can paste into your document. In addition to native integration for citation autocompletion with most LATEX editors, there exist many user contributed scripts which make a wide range of bibliographic chores easy. For online collaboration, BibDesk allows both bibliography sharing with your colleagues and export to HTML and RSS, so everybody can be up-to-date.