I'd like to be able to export BibTeX entries as (flexibly formatted) strings. For example, a BibTeX entry like this one: @Article{Chomsky:59, author = {Noam Chomsky}, title = {On Certain Formal Properties of Grammars}, year = {1959}, volume = {2}, pages = {137--167}, journal = {Information and Control} } Should be converted into the following string: Chomsky, Noam. 1959. On Certain Formal Properties of Grammars. Information and Control 2. 137--167. I used to manage my BibTeX database with JabRef which lets you [customize exports][1]. But I haven't seen something similar in Emacs/`bibtex.el`. [1]: http://help.jabref.org/en/CustomExports