How can I use bibtex with google docs to produce RTF files for journal submission?

Question

Our project quite happily uses google docs to collaborately edit documents and store a bunch of them. We also quite happily use ConTeXt to produce internal publications in pdf format.

Unfortunately, when dealing with humanities journals, the requirement is "all Word, all the time."

Therefore, given that we have a trival output of a BibTeX citations DB in Mendeley (that also provides for group collaboration on citations), a fair amount of ConTeXt expertise and awareness in the group, and a document in google docs, what is a simple and reliable workflow to somehow use BibTeX citations to do in-line citations in arbitrary journal format X (::muttermuttermutter::) and optimally, basic header and footnote typesetting?

Answer 1

bibtex is not your main problem in this work flow, but rather context. Once your document is at final stage you can remove the bibtex part of the compilation by including the output .bbl file in your source code. For example, using the setup of References in ConTeXt

orig-file.tex:

\setupinteraction  [state=start]
\placebookmarks    [title, chapter] [force=yes]
\setupbibtex       [database=xampl]
\setuppublications [numbering=yes]

\starttext

\startchapter [title=One]
    As \cite[lat2cont] already indicated, bibtex is a \LaTeX-centric program.
\stopchapter

%\completepublications [criterium=text] % produces *pubs* as PDF bookmark
\starttitle [title=References]          % produces *References* as PDF bookmark
    \placepublications
\stoptitle

\stoptext

with xampl.bib

@article{lat2cont,
    title   = {Latex to context},
    author  = {Abc},
    journal = {Xyz},
    year    = 2003,
    pages   = {603-619},
}

compiles producing orig-file.bbl

\setuppublicationlist[samplesize={Abc03},totalnumber=1]

\startpublication[k=lat2cont,t=article,
a={{Abc}},y=2003,
n=1,s=Abc03]
\artauthor[]{}[]{}{Abc}
\pubyear{2003}
\arttitle{Latex to context}
\journal{Xyz}
\pages{603-619}
\stoppublication

Pasting this into your original file and commenting out the reference to the external database, we get new-file.tex which compiles without bibtex:

\setupinteraction  [state=start]
\placebookmarks    [title, chapter] [force=yes]
%\setupbibtex       [database=xampl]
\setuppublications [numbering=yes]
\setuppublicationlist[samplesize={Abc03},totalnumber=1]

\startpublication[k=lat2cont,t=article,
a={{Abc}},y=2003,
n=1,s=Abc03]
\artauthor[]{}[]{}{Abc}
\pubyear{2003}
\arttitle{Latex to context}
\journal{Xyz}
\pages{603-619}
\stoppublication



\starttext

\startchapter [title=One]
    As \cite[lat2cont] already indicated, bibtex is a \LaTeX-centric program.
\stopchapter

%\completepublications [criterium=text] % produces *pubs* as PDF bookmark
\starttitle [title=References]          % produces *References* as PDF bookmark
    \placepublications
\stoptitle

\stoptext

Now you need a context to rtf/word converter - but the FAQ suggests this does not exist. If you use LaTeX then there are converter programs.