Convert a .bbl file to a .bib file

Question

I am looking for a program or web service that can convert a .bbl file to a .bib file. Any OS/license/price is fine.

I am aware that some information may be missing in the resulting .bib file, which may require some manual post-processing, but that would still be better performing the entire conversion manually.

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I tried AMS' MRef as well as text2bib but these tools expect the references as listed in the final documents, not the .bbl file itself

Examples of references that are correctly converted by these two tools:

Arrow, K. J., L. Hurwicz, and H. Uzawa (1961), "Constraint qualifications in maximization problems," Naval Research Logistics Quarterly 8, 175-191.
Arrow, K. J., L. Hurwicz, and H. Uzawa [1961], ``Constraint qualifications in maximization problems,'' {\it Naval Research Logistics Quarterly}, 8(2), 175-191.

The "best" method I found so far is parsing the bbl to extract the title and authors, then use AHK/Sikuli/Selenium to query Google Scholar and retrieve the bibtex from it.

Answer 1

If the bibliography IS mathematical in nature, I would recommend the straight use of bbl2bib, which does use the AMS-Mref framework.

If the bibliography is NOT mathematical, you can use tex2bib, the new version accepts a BBL file, even though, it does not say that at the main web-page.