How to name a pdf file of an acadamic paper in a gentle way?

This article uses gerrit’s answer for reference under CC BY-SA 4.0

Naming Patterns

Let’s start with a true example: MOEA/D paper APA style as follow

Zhang, Q., & Li, H. (2007). MOEA/D: A multiobjective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition. *IEEE Transactions on evolutionary computation*, *11*(6), 712-731.

Filename

nnnnnnYY_tttt_kkk.pdf

• nnnnnnn: The last name of the first author
• YY: 2-digit year of publication
• tttt: keyword of the title
• kkk: abbreviation of journal of publication

After the transformation, the file name comes to:

Zhang07_MOEAD_TEVC.pdf

bibtex key

Simply change the first underline to a colon:

Zhang07:MOEAD_TEVC.pdf