CrossTeX is a new bibliography management tool. It comprises a new bibliographic database format that is much less prone to error and much easier to manage compared to other alternatives like BibTeX, and a new, more flexible tool for creating the citations that appear at the end of scholarly texts.
CrossTeX was born out of the author's frustration with inconsistencies and errors in the citations of scholarly papers.
The main feature of CrossTeX is that it is object-oriented. You can define a “conference” object, and simply refer to it. You can similarly define “location” objects and refer to them. You can specify that a conference object in a particular year was held in a particular location, and none of your paper information need ever repeat this information again. You can spell the name of an author correctly just once, and simply reuse that object instead of having to re-spell it every time.
In contrast, BibTeX is based on a relational database, where every reference contains copies of the fields it uses. It is not uncommon for a database file to have the same conference name, author, or location repeated numerous times, often with errors and inconsistencies.
CrossTeX is backwards-compatible with BibTeX. You can use a BibTeX database with CrossTeX, and invoke crosstex where you used to invoke bibtex. It is particularly well-suited for use in Computer Science and Engineering, with support for frequently cited publication formats and an extensive library of published articles at top conferences.
Check out the feature list, frequently asked questions, and the tutorial.