OverCite

add citations to LaTeX without leaving your editor.

Type rough citation key → press shortcut → choose paper → OverCite inserts BibTeX.

Using OverCite in a paper?

If OverCite helped with your manuscript, consider acknowledging it with:

This work made use of \texttt{OverCite} \citep{Shariat2026}, an in-editor citation tool for \LaTeX.

You can add the BibTeX by running OverCite on \citep{Shariat2026} or by copying it from Acknowledge.

Chrome, Firefox, and VS Code show this request once after the first successful insertion following the relevant update. The shown receipt stays only in local extension state; OverCite does not report usage or manuscript activity.

Get Started

Install OverCite from the place where you write:

| Editor | Best install path | Notes | | --- | --- | --- | | Overleaf in Chrome | Chrome Web Store | Recommended for most Overleaf users | | Overleaf in Firefox | Firefox Add-ons | Same workflow as Chrome | | Local LaTeX in VS Code | Visual Studio Marketplace | Uses your local .tex and .bib files | | TeXstudio | Local setup | Experimental local macro setup | | Safari | Local build | Beta |

Then:

1. Open the OverCite settings.
2. Choose your subject area.

1. Try a citation you know, such as one of your own papers or a colleague's paper.

How to Use

The default shortcut is Alt+Shift+E. Mac users: Alt = Option / ⌥.

1. Type a rough citation key like \citep{Dirac1928}, \citep{Watson1953}, or \citep{Doudna14}. You can also leave out the year, search for a title, or paste a DOI/arXiv id (see Examples).
2. Put the cursor on the key you want to resolve.
3. Press Alt+Shift+E (or remap this).
4. Review the OverCite results and choose the paper you want.
5. That's it! OverCite will update the cite key and insert the BibTeX entry into your .bib file.

Examples

Search modes:

1. Contextual uses the rough key plus nearby sentence context.
2. Simple search searches author/year only and sorts by citation count.
3. Raw query sends the typed token directly to the configured source route.

| Mode | Example | Good for | | --- | --- | --- | | Contextual | CRISPR-Cas9 genome engineering became broadly programmable after \citep{Doudna14}. | Known results with useful sentence context | | Contextual | Transformers made attention central in language modeling \citep{Vaswani17}. | Computer science and ML papers | | Simple search | The emcee sampler is widely used in astronomy \citep{Foreman-Mackey2013}. | Author/year lookups | | Simple search | A sparse regression baseline is provided by \citep{Tibshirani1996}. | Broad cross-field author/year keys | | Raw query | \citep{10.1038/s41586-021-03819-2} | DOI lookup | | Raw query | \citep{arXiv:1706.03762} | arXiv lookup | | Raw query | \citep{author:"Schlegel" title:"dust"} | ADS/SciX fielded query | | Raw query | \citep{title:"MNIST"} | Title search | | Raw query | \citep{software citation station} | Plain text search |

Note that you can set the Default Search Mode in settings.

New browser installs, including the Chrome, Firefox, and local Safari builds, start with Simple search for non-empty citation keys. Existing saved browser preferences are preserved, and an empty \cite{} still uses contextual search. The VS Code and TeXstudio defaults are unchanged.

More rough keys:

• \citep{Higgs1964}: Higgs mechanism
• \citep{Dirac1928}: quantum theory of the electron
• \citep{Watson1953}: DNA double helix
• \citep{El-Badry2023}: closest black hole
• \citep{hep-th/9711200}: AdS/CFT
• \citep{10.57702/vmvbuu5i}: MNIST dataset

Scope

OverCite works best when you already know the paper, author, or result you want to cite, and want to add it without leaving the editor. It is designed to replace the interruptive workflow of stopping, searching, copying BibTeX, renaming the citation key, and then returning to writing.

OverCite is not meant to replace broader literature exploration or paper discovery.

Settings

OverCite keeps the UI simple and puts the main behavior controls in settings. Chrome, Firefox, and VS Code use their normal extension settings pages. TeXstudio uses a small JSON settings file that can be opened from TeXstudio with the OverCite: Open Settings macro.

!OverCite source settings

Current settings include:

• ADS/SciX API token
• Optional NCBI API key for higher-rate PubMed requests
• Subject-area search coverage, primary source, and optional fallback sources. One database is usually enough; add 1-2 backups only for cross-field work.
• Theme selection
• Citation key style, including plain author-year keys like Jumper2021, underscore keys like Jumper_2021, colon keys like Jumper:2021, informative keys like Jumper21_alphafold, ADS bibcodes like 2025PASP..137i4201S, or keeping the typed key
• Bibliography entry order, including alphabetical insertion by citation key
• Browser return behavior, so OverCite can dismiss the popup immediately and switch back to the original .tex file after updating the .bib file
• Default search mode, so OverCite can open in contextual mode, simple search mode, or raw query mode first
• Project-specific bibliography file overrides (when a project contains multiple .bib files)

Install

For most users, installation is just:

1. Install OverCite from Chrome, Firefox, or VS Code.
2. Open OverCite settings and choose your subject area.
3. Add a NASA ADS/SciX API token if you want ADS/SciX search.
4. Get citing!

*sign in to NASA ADS or SciX, then go to your account settings and copy an API token

Acknowledge

If OverCite was helpful in preparing your manuscript, you can acknowledge it with:

This work made use of \texttt{OverCite} \citep{Shariat2026}, an in-editor citation tool for \LaTeX.

To get the BibTeX, you can just activate OverCite on \citep{Shariat2026} ;)

...or you can copy it here:

@ARTICLE{Shariat2026,
       author = {{Shariat}, Cheyanne},
        title = "{OverCite: Add Citations in LaTeX without Leaving the Editor}",
      journal = {Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society},
     keywords = {Astronomy software, Open source software, 1855, 1866, Digital Libraries, Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics, Human-Computer Interaction, Information Retrieval},
         year = 2026,
        month = apr,
       volume = {10},
       number = {4},
          eid = {86},
        pages = {86},
          doi = {10.3847/2515-5172/ae5dbc},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
       eprint = {2604.15366},
 primaryClass = {cs.DL},
       adsurl = {https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2026RNAAS..10...86S},
      adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

Documentation

• Changelog: CHANGELOG.md
• Release notes: browser v0.3.10 / VS Code v0.3.5
• TeXstudio setup: texstudio/README.md
• TeXstudio settings: texstudio/SETTINGS.md
• Paper: RNAAS article
• Paper PDF: docs/papers/OverCite_RNAAS_2026.pdf
• Logic flow: docs/OverCite_logic_flow.md
• Ranking flow: docs/OverCite_ranking_flow.md
• Privacy policy: PRIVACY.md

Updating

If you install from the Chrome Web Store, Firefox Add-on page, or VS Code Marketplace, updates come through those channels automatically. Manual repo updates are only relevant for local developer installs.

Existing settings are preserved when OverCite updates. Browser users may see a one-time permission prompt only if they choose one of the new non-ADS databases.

Notes

• OverCite does not use an LLM during any part of the search/ranking.
• OverCite works with arbitrary .bib file names and is not limited to references.bib.
• For common surnames, you can optionally include a first initial in the cite key to narrow results, for example LiM25, WangY2020, or SmithJ05.
• Multi-word surnames such as Van der Waals1910, De Mink2014, and Bailer Jones2018 are supported.
• Collaborations such as Planck Collaboration, ATLAS Collaboration, and The LIGO Collaboration25 are supported.
• Chrome and Firefox should be loaded from the generated extension/dist/ folders, not directly from the source extension/ manifest.
• Maintainers can regenerate those browser-specific dist/ folders with cd extension && npm run build.
• If the popup gets stuck, try refreshing Overleaf and/or clicking Reload on the OverCite extension at chrome://extensions/.

Contact

I am always happy to hear your thoughts or get any feedback! You can contact me at [email protected].