Pandoc — Universal Document Converter

Convert between Markdown, LaTeX, Word, HTML, and PDF from the command line. Write your paper once in Markdown and export to any format a journal or supervisor asks for.

2026-01-21 1 MIN READ

Official Site https://pandoc.org
Category Writing
Pricing Free
Rating ★★★★★ (5/5)

What Pandoc Does — in One Line

Pandoc converts between nearly every document format that exists. For researchers, the key workflow is:

Markdown (.md) → PDF (via LaTeX)
Markdown (.md) → Word (.docx)
Markdown (.md) → HTML
LaTeX (.tex)   → Word (.docx)

The Researcher’s Markdown Writing Stack

Write your paper in Markdown using any text editor. Use YAML front matter to declare metadata. Cite references with [@smith2023] syntax and a .bib file. Then:

# To PDF (journal-quality, via LaTeX)
pandoc paper.md -o paper.pdf --citeproc --bibliography=refs.bib

# To Word (for co-authors or supervisor review)
pandoc paper.md -o paper.docx --citeproc --bibliography=refs.bib

# With a custom LaTeX template
pandoc paper.md -o paper.pdf --template=my-template.tex --citeproc

Result: one source file, any output format. No reformatting when a co-author prefers Word or a journal wants LaTeX.

Pandoc + Zotero + Better BibTeX

The complete writing pipeline:

  1. Manage references in Zotero
  2. Export .bib via Better BibTeX (auto-updating)
  3. Write in Markdown using [@citekey] syntax
  4. Run pandoc --citeproc to generate a formatted bibliography in any citation style (CSL files)

This setup produces publication-ready papers without touching a word processor.