Development update: reference extraction & linking : arXiv.org blog

"Based on user and stakeholder feedback, extracting cited references from arXiv papers and providing links to those references for readers was identified for development under the 2017 arXiv Roadmap, based on input from the arXiv user survey. We have also heard from our API consumers that access to cited references would be valuable. arXiv already detects arXiv identifiers in cited references (for LaTeX submissions), and converts those identifiers to hyperlinks to the corresponding arXiv paper in the final PDF."