diff --git a/Modules/Bibliographic/classes/class.ilObjBibliographic.php b/Modules/Bibliographic/classes/class.ilObjBibliographic.php
index 1e0090759627..6f08ea0210ff 100644
--- a/Modules/Bibliographic/classes/class.ilObjBibliographic.php
+++ b/Modules/Bibliographic/classes/class.ilObjBibliographic.php
@@ -490,8 +490,10 @@ public function writeSourcefileEntriesToDb() {
 					$attribute = implode(", ", $attribute);
 				}
 				// reduce the attribute strings to a maximum of 4000 (ATTRIBUTE_VALUE_MAXIMAL_TEXT_LENGTH) characters, in order to fit in the database
-				if (mb_strlen($attribute, 'UTF-8') > self::ATTRIBUTE_VALUE_MAXIMAL_TEXT_LENGTH) {
-					$attribute = mb_substr($attribute, 0, self::ATTRIBUTE_VALUE_MAXIMAL_TEXT_LENGTH - 3, 'UTF-8') . '...';
+				//if (mb_strlen($attribute, 'UTF-8') > self::ATTRIBUTE_VALUE_MAXIMAL_TEXT_LENGTH) {
+				if (ilStr::strLen($attribute) > self::ATTRIBUTE_VALUE_MAXIMAL_TEXT_LENGTH) {
+					// $attribute = mb_substr($attribute, 0, self::ATTRIBUTE_VALUE_MAXIMAL_TEXT_LENGTH - 3, 'UTF-8') . '...';
+					$attribute = ilStr::subStr($attribute, 0, self::ATTRIBUTE_VALUE_MAXIMAL_TEXT_LENGTH - 3) . '...';
 				}
 				// ty (RIS) or entryType (BIB) is the type and is treated seperately
 				if (strtolower($key) == 'ty' || strtolower($key) == 'entrytype') {