Automating BibTeX

LaTeX is a very versatile tool which help one regularly writing articles to scientific journals, to save a huge amount of time. On of the important tool in this application is the management of wikipedia:bibliography. Hardworking people first write the manuscript and then write the references on by one. Lazy ones (e.g. myself) use a specialized tool to automatically generate the list. BibTeX(LNK) is such a tool that works with LaTeX. It can produce beautiful error free list of bibliography formatted to the exact specifications of the targeted publication.

The downside (Ah! There always is one!!) is one has to spend countless hours preparing the list of BibTeX entries (called the BibTeX database) in a format like:

@ARTICLE{Dawkins05,
        author      = {Dawkins, R.},
        title       = {UNINTELLIGENT DESIGN - How could these medicore
          theorists be allowed to expose a great science power to worldwide
          ridicule?},
        journal     = {Newsweek},
        year        = {2005},
        volume      = {15-DEC-2005},
        number      = {SPI},
        pages       = {88-89}
}