Is there any accepted format for BibTeX citation keys? Zotero uses the author_title_year format and Google Scholar uses authorYearTitle (I'm in favor of Google's format). I use output files of both; that makes my BibTeX files inconsistent.
If there is no accepted format, which format if used by most softwares? What is your suggestion?
I use Pajoohyar (a fork of Zotero) with AutoZotBib plugin.
Update: I should point out that my editor is TeXworks that unfortunately has no auto-complete or other facilities for citation insertion
Best Answer
I think the best advice is to pick a format that works for you and stick to it. If you have a sensible workflow, then it doesn't really matter what your keys are. For example, I use RefTeX in emacs to insert keys. So I basically can just ad-hoc search for the author name and then mark the references I want to insert. I don't actually have to remember what the keys are.
That said, here's one piece of advice that has made my life easier: Whatever format your bibtex keys are in, try to put your downloaded pdfs in the same format. That makes finding a paper you cited way easier.