bibliography with latex

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Bibliography in latex with bibtex/biblatex, learn how to create a bibliography with bibtex and biblatex in a few simple steps. create references / citations and autogenerate footnotes., creating a .bib file, using bibtex.

• Autogenerate footnotes with BibLaTeX
• BibTeX Format

BibTeX Styles

• New Post! Export Bibliographic Database (BibTeX) Entries from Online Databases

We have looked at many features of LaTeX so far and learned that many things are automated by LaTeX. There are functions to add a table of contents, lists of tables and figures and also several packages that allow us to generate a bibliography. I will describe how to use bibtex and biblatex (both external programs) to create the bibliography. At first we have to create a .bib file, which contains our bibliographic information.

A .bib file will contain the bibliographic information of our document. I will only give a simple example, since there are many tools to generate the entries automatically. I will not explain the structure of the file itself at this point, since i suggest using a bibtex generator (choose one from google). Our example will contain a single book and look like this:

If you don’t want to use a BibTeX generator or a reference management tool like Citavi (which generates BibTeX files automatically for you), you can find more examples of BibTeX formats here.

After creating the bibtex file, we have to tell LaTeX where to find our bibliographic database. For BibTeX this is not much different from printing the table of contents. We just need the commands \bibliography  which tells LaTeX the location of our .bib file and \bibliographystyle which selects one of various bibliographic styles.

By using this code, we will obtain something like this:

I named my .bib file lesson7a1.bib, note that I did not enter the .bib extension. For the style, I’ve choosen the ieeetr style, which is very common for my subject, but there are many more styles available. Which will change the way our references look like. The ieeetr style will mark citations with successive numbers such as [1] in this example. If I choose the style to apalike instead, i will get the following result:

Most editors will let you select, to run bibtex automatically on compilation. In TeXworks (MiKTeX) for example, this should be selected by default.

If you use a different editor, it can be necessary to execute the bibtex command manually. In a command prompt/shell simply run:

It is necessary to execute the pdflatex command, before the bibtex command, to tell bibtex what literature we cited in our paper. Afterwards the .bib file will be translated into the proper output for out references section. The next two steps merge the reference section with our LaTeX document and then assign successive numbers in the last step.

Autogenerate footnotes in \(\LaTeX\) using BibLaTeX

The abilities of BibTeX are limited to basic styles as depicted in the examples shown above. Sometimes it is necessary to cite all literature in footnotes and maintaining all of them by hand can be a frustrating task. At this point BibLaTeX kicks in and does the work for us. The syntax varies a bit from the first document. We now have to include the biblatex package and use the \autocite and \printbibliography  command. It is crucial to move the \bibliography{lesson7a1} statement to the preamble of our document:

The \autocite command generates the footnotes and we can enter a page number in the brackets \autocite[1]{DUMMY:1} will generate a footnote like this:

For BibLaTeX we have to choose the citation style on package inclusion with:

The backend=bibtex  part makes sure to use BibTeX instead of Biber as our backend, since Biber fails to work in some editors like TeXworks. It took me a while to figure out how to generate footnotes automatically, because the sources I found on the internet, didn’t mention this at all.

BibTeX Formats

This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of BibTeX formats, but rather give you an idea of how to cite various sources properly. If you’re interested in an extensive overview of all BibTeX formats, I suggest you to check out the resources on Wikibooks.

Inbook (specific pages)

This is a list of the formats that I have most commonly used. If you think some important format is missing here, please let me know.

Here’s a quick overview of some popular styles to use with BibTeX.

I’m trying to keep this list updated with other commonly used styles. If you’re missing something here, please let me know.

• Generate a bibliography with BibTeX and BibLaTeX
• First define a .bib file using: \bibliography{BIB_FILE_NAME} (do not add .bib)
• For BibTeX put the \bibliography statement in your document , for BibLaTeX in the preamble
• BibTeX  uses the \bibliographystyle command to set the citation style
• BibLaTeX chooses the style as an option like:  \usepackage[backend=bibtex, style=verbose-trad2]{biblatex}
• BibTeX uses the \cite command, while BibLaTeX uses the \autocite command
• The \autocite command takes the page number as an option: \autocite[NUM]{}

Next Lesson: 08 Footnotes

LaTeX/Bibliography Management

For any academic/research writing, incorporating references into a document is an important task. Fortunately, LaTeX has a variety of features that make dealing with references much simpler, including built-in support for citing references. However, a much more powerful and flexible solution is achieved thanks to an auxiliary tool called BibTeX (which comes bundled as standard with LaTeX). Recently, BibTeX has been succeeded among many users by BibLaTeX , a tool configurable within LaTeX syntax.

BibTeX provides for the storage of all references in a bibliographic information file with the file extension .bib , a kind of flat-file database. (BibLaTeX uses this same file format but with more and different bibliographic entry types and field types than BibTeX.) This database can be referenced in any LaTeX document, and citations made to any record that is contained within the file. This is often more convenient than embedding them at the end of every document written; a centralized bibliography source can be linked to as many documents as desired (write once, read many!). Of course, bibliographies can be split over as many files as one wishes, so there can be a file containing sources concerning topic A ( a.bib ) and another concerning topic B ( b.bib ). When writing about topic AB, both of these files can be linked into the document (perhaps in addition to sources ab.bib specific to topic AB).

• 1 Embedded system
• 2.1 Referring more specifically
• 2.2 Multiple citations
• 2.3 Bibliography styles
• 2.4 No cite
• 2.5.1 Customization
• 3.1 Authors
• 3.2 Standard templates
• 3.3 Non-standard templates
• 3.4 Preserving case of letters
• 3.5 A few additional examples
• 3.6 Getting current LaTeX document to use your .bib file
• 3.7 Why won't LaTeX generate any output?
• 3.8 Including URLs in bibliography
• 3.9 Customizing bibliography appearance
• 3.10 Localizing bibliography appearance
• 3.11 Showing unused items
• 3.12 Getting bibliographic data
• 3.13 Helpful tools
• 3.14 Summary
• 4.1 Using tocbibind
• 4.2.1 As unnumbered item
• 4.2.2 As numbered item
• 5.1 Entry and field types in .bib files
• 5.2.1 Printing separate bibliographies
• 5.2.2 Example with prefix keys, subheadings and table of contents
• 6.1 Using multibib
• 6.2 Using bibtopic
• 7 Notes and references

Embedded system [ edit | edit source ]

If you are writing only one or two documents and aren't planning on writing more on the same subject for a long time, you might not want to waste time creating a database of references you are never going to use. In this case you should consider using the basic and simple bibliography support that is embedded within LaTeX.

LaTeX provides an environment called thebibliography that you have to use where you want the bibliography; that usually means at the very end of your document, just before the \end{document} command. Here is a practical example:

OK, so what is going on here? The first thing to notice is the establishment of the environment. thebibliography is a keyword that tells LaTeX to recognize everything between the begin and end tags as data for the bibliography. The mandatory argument, which I supplied after the begin statement, is telling LaTeX how wide the item label will be when printed. Note however, that the number itself is not the parameter, but the number of digits is. Therefore, I am effectively telling LaTeX that I will only need reference labels of one character in length, which ultimately means no more than nine references in total. If you want more than nine, then input any two-digit number, such as '56', which allows up to 99 references.

Next is the actual reference entry itself. This is prefixed with the \bibitem{ cite_key } command. The cite_key should be a unique identifier for that particular reference, and is often some sort of mnemonic consisting of any sequence of letters, numbers and punctuation symbols (although not a comma). I often use the surname of the first author, followed by the last two digits of the year (hence lamport94 ). If that author has produced more than one reference for a given year, then I add letters after, 'a', 'b', etc. But, you should do whatever works for you. Everything after the key is the reference itself. You need to type it as you want it to be presented. I have put the different parts of the reference, such as author, title, etc., on different lines for readability. These linebreaks are ignored by LaTeX. The \textit{} command formats the title properly in italics.

Citations [ edit | edit source ]

To actually cite a given document is very easy. Go to the point where you want the citation to appear, and use the following: \cite{ cite_key } , where the cite_key is that of the bibitem you wish to cite. When LaTeX processes the document, the citation will be cross-referenced with the bibitems and replaced with the appropriate number citation. The advantage here, once again, is that LaTeX looks after the numbering for you. If it were totally manual, then adding or removing a reference would be a real chore, as you would have to re-number all the citations by hand.

Referring more specifically [ edit | edit source ]

If you want to refer to a certain page, figure or theorem in a text book, you can use the arguments to the \cite command:

The argument, "p. 215", will show up inside the same brackets. Note the tilde in [p.~215] , which replaces the end-of-sentence spacing with a non-breakable inter-word space. This non-breakable inter-word space is inserted because the end-of-sentence spacing would be too wide, and "p." should not be separated from the page number. The code \cite[215]{citation01} will produce the same result — in this case p.~ in front of the page number will be added automatically; but it will not be added for \cite[Cor.~2.5]{citation01} .

Multiple citations [ edit | edit source ]

When a sequence of multiple citations is needed, you should use a single \cite{} command. The citations are then separated by commas. Here's an example:

The result will then be shown as citations inside the same brackets, depending on the citation style.

Bibliography styles [ edit | edit source ]

There are several different ways to format lists of bibliographic references and the citations to them in the text. These are called citation styles , and consist of two parts: the format of the abbreviated citation (i.e. the marker that is inserted into the text to identify the entry in the list of references) and the format of the corresponding entry in the list of references, which includes full bibliographic details.

Abbreviated citations can be of two main types: numbered or textual. Numbered citations (also known as the Vancouver referencing system ) are numbered consecutively in order of appearance in the text, and consist in Arabic numerals in parentheses (1) , square brackets [1] , superscript 1 , or a combination thereof [1] . Textual citations (also known as the Harvard referencing system ) use the author surname and (usually) the year as the abbreviated form of the citation, which is normally fully (Smith 2014) or partially enclosed in parenthesis, as in Smith (2014) . The latter form allows the citation to be integrated in the sentence it supports.

Below you can see three of the styles available with LaTeX:

Here are some more often used styles:

However, keep in mind that you will need to use the natbib package to use most of these.

No cite [ edit | edit source ]

If you only want a reference to appear in the bibliography, but not where it is referenced in the main text, then the \nocite{} command can be used, for example:

A special version of the command, \nocite{*} , includes all entries from the database, whether they are referenced in the document or not.

Natbib [ edit | edit source ]

Using the standard LaTeX bibliography support, you will see that each reference is numbered and each citation corresponds to the numbers. The numeric style of citation is quite common in scientific writing. In other disciplines, the author-year style, e.g., (Roberts, 2003), such as Harvard is preferred. The natbib package is one possible way to get such an output. In fact, it can supersede LaTeX's own citation commands, as Natbib allows the user to easily switch between Harvard or numeric.

The first job is to add the following to your preamble in order to get LaTeX to use the Natbib package:

An example of useful options is:

Also, you need to change the bibliography style file to be used, so edit the appropriate line at the bottom of the file so that it reads: \bibliographystyle{plainnat} . Once done, it is basically a matter of altering the existing \cite commands to display the type of citation you want.

Customization [ edit | edit source ]

The main commands simply add a t for 'textual' or p for 'parenthesized', to the basic \cite command. You will also notice how Natbib by default will compress references with three or more authors to the more concise 1st surname et al version. By adding an asterisk (*), you can override this default and list all authors associated with that citation. There are some other specialized commands that Natbib supports, listed in the table here. Keep in mind that for instance abbrvnat does not support \citet* and will automatically choose between all authors and et al..

The final area that I wish to cover about Natbib is customizing its citation style. There is a command called \bibpunct that can be used to override the defaults and change certain settings. For example, I have put the following in the preamble:

The command requires six mandatory parameters.

• The symbol for the opening bracket.
• The symbol for the closing bracket.
• The symbol that appears between multiple citations.
• n - numerical style.
• s - numerical superscript style.
• any other letter - author-year style.
• The punctuation to appear between the author and the year (in parenthetical case only).
• The punctuation used between years, in multiple citations when there is a common author. e.g., (Chomsky 1956, 1957). If you want an extra space, then you need {,~} .

Some of the options controlled by \bibpunct are also accessible by passing options to the natbib package when it is loaded. These options also allow some other aspect of the bibliography to be controlled, and can be seen in the table (right).

So as you can see, this package is quite flexible, especially as you can easily switch between different citation styles by changing a single parameter. Do have a look at the Natbib manual , it's a short document and you can learn even more about how to use it.

BibTeX [ edit | edit source ]

I have previously introduced the idea of embedding references at the end of the document, and then using the \cite command to cite them within the text. In this tutorial, I want to do a little better than this method, as it's not as flexible as it could be. I will concentrate on using BibTeX .

A BibTeX database is stored as a .bib file. It is a plain text file, and so can be viewed and edited easily. The structure of the file is also quite simple. An example of a BibTeX entry:

Each entry begins with the declaration of the reference type, in the form of @ type . BibTeX knows of practically all types you can think of, common ones are: book , article , and for papers presented at conferences, there is inproceedings . In this example, I have referred to an article within a journal.

After the type, you must have a left curly brace ' { ' to signify the beginning of the reference attributes. The first one follows immediately after the brace, which is the citation key , or the BibTeX key . This key must be unique for all entries in your bibliography. It is this identifier that you will use within your document to cross-reference it to this entry. It is up to you as to how you wish to label each reference, but there is a loose standard in which you use the author's surname, followed by the year of publication. This is the scheme that I use in this tutorial.

Next, it should be clear that what follows are the relevant fields and data for that particular reference. The field names on the left are BibTeX keywords . They are followed by an equals sign (=) where the value for that field is then placed. BibTeX expects you to explicitly label the beginning and end of each value. I personally use quotation marks ("), however, you also have the option of using curly braces ('{', '}'). But as you will soon see, curly braces have other roles, within attributes, so I prefer not to use them for this job as they can get more confusing. A notable exception is when you want to use characters with umlauts (ü, ö, etc), since their notation is in the format \"{o} , and the quotation mark will close the one opening the field, causing an error in the parsing of the reference. Using \usepackage[utf8]{inputenc} in the preamble to the .tex source file can get round this, as the accented characters can just be stored in the .bib file without any need for special markup. This allows a consistent format to be kept throughout the .bib file, avoiding the need to use braces when there are umlauts to consider.

Remember that each attribute must be followed by a comma to delimit one from another. You do not need to add a comma to the last attribute, since the closing brace will tell BibTeX that there are no more attributes for this entry, although you won't get an error if you do.

It can take a while to learn what the reference types are, and what fields each type has available (and which ones are required or optional, etc). So, look at this entry type reference and also this field reference for descriptions of all the fields. It may be worth bookmarking or printing these pages so that they are easily at hand when you need them. Much of the information contained therein is repeated in the following table for your convenience.

+ Required fields, o Optional fields *1 (Clarification needed) *2 (Clarification needed)

Authors [ edit | edit source ]

BibTeX can be quite clever with names of authors. It can accept names in forename surname or surname, forename . I personally use the former, but remember that the order you input them (or any data within an entry for that matter) is customizable and so you can get BibTeX to manipulate the input and then output it however you like. If you use the forename surname method, then you must be careful with a few special names, where there are compound surnames, for example "John von Neumann". In this form, BibTeX assumes that the last word is the surname, and everything before is the forename, plus any middle names. You must therefore manually tell BibTeX to keep the 'von' and 'Neumann' together. This is achieved easily using curly braces. So the final result would be "John {von Neumann}". This is easily avoided with the surname, forename , since you have a comma to separate the surname from the forename.

Secondly, there is the issue of how to tell BibTeX when a reference has more than one author. This is very simply done by putting the keyword and in between every author. As we can see from another example:

This book has three authors, and each is separated as described. Of course, when BibTeX processes and outputs this, there will only be an 'and' between the penultimate and last authors, but within the .bib file, it needs the and s so that it can keep track of the individual authors.

Standard templates [ edit | edit source ]

Standard templates that can be directly copied and filled in. Optional entries are marked in the core by a ? prefix. Note that the % sign used in LaTeX for commenting lines does not work in BibTeX and creates invalid field name. In BibTeX, valid but unknown field names and names outside of an entry are ignored, leading to a popular commenting method. <--Be careful if you copy the following templates, the % sign is not valid to comment out lines in bibtex files. If you want to comment out a line, you have to put it outside the entry.-->

• Required fields: author, title, journal, year.
• Optional fields: volume, number, pages, month, note.
• Required fields: author/editor, title, publisher, year.
• Optional fields: volume/number, series, address, edition, month, note.
• Required fields: title.
• Optional fields: author, howpublished, address, month, year, note.
• Required fields: author, title, booktitle, year.
• Optional fields: editor, volume/number, series, pages, address, month, organization, publisher, note.
• Required fields: author/editor, title, chapter and/or pages, publisher, year.
• Optional fields: volume/number, series, type, address, edition, month, note.
• Required fields: author, title, booktitle, publisher, year.
• Optional fields: editor, volume/number, series, type, chapter, pages, address, edition, month, note.
• Optional fields: author, organization, address, edition, month, year, note.
• Required fields: author, title, school, year.
• Optional fields: type (eg. "diploma thesis"), address, month, note.
• Required fields: none
• Optional fields: author, title, howpublished, month, year, note.
• Required fields: author, title, year, school.
• Optional fields: address, month, keywords, note.
• Required fields: title, year.
• Optional fields: editor, volume/number, series, address, month, organization, publisher, note.
• Required fields: author, title, institution, year.
• Optional fields: type, number, address, month, note.
• Required fields: author, title, note.
• Optional fields: month, year.

Non-standard templates [ edit | edit source ]

Preserving case of letters [ edit | edit source ].

In the event that BibTeX has been set by the chosen style not to preserve all capitalization within titles, problems can occur, especially if you are referring to proper nouns, or acronyms. To tell BibTeX to keep them, use the good old curly braces around the letter in question, (or letters, if it's an acronym) and all will be well! It is even possible that lower-case letters may need to be preserved - for example if a chemical formula is used in a style that sets a title in all caps or small caps, or if "pH" is to be used in a style that capitalises all first letters.

However, avoid putting the whole title in curly braces, as it will look odd if a different capitalization format is used:

For convenience though, many people simply put double curly braces, which may help when writing scientific articles for different magazines, conferences with different BibTex styles that do sometimes keep and sometimes not keep the capital letters:

As an alternative, try other BibTex styles or modify the existing. The approach of putting only relevant text in curly brackets is the most feasible if using a template under the control of a publisher, such as for journal submissions. Using curly braces around single letters is also to be avoided if possible, as it may mess up the kerning, especially with biblatex, [1] so the first step should generally be to enclose single words in braces.

A few additional examples [ edit | edit source ]

Below you will find a few additional examples of bibliography entries. The first one covers the case of multiple authors in the Surname, Firstname format, and the second one deals with the incollection case.

If you have to cite a website you can use @misc, for example:

The note field comes in handy if you need to add unstructured information, for example that the corresponding issue of the journal has yet to appear:

Getting current LaTeX document to use your .bib file [ edit | edit source ]

At the end of your LaTeX file (that is, after the content, but before \end{document} ), you need to place the following commands:

Bibliography styles are files recognized by BibTeX that tell it how to format the information stored in the .bib file when processed for output. And so the first command listed above is declaring which style file to use. The style file in this instance is plain.bst (which comes as standard with BibTeX). You do not need to add the .bst extension when using this command, as it is assumed. Despite its name, the plain style does a pretty good job (look at the output of this tutorial to see what I mean).

The second command is the one that actually specifies the .bib file you wish to use. The ones I created for this tutorial were called sample1.bib , sample2.bib , . . ., samplen.bib , but once again, you don't include the file extension. At the moment, the .bib file is in the same directory as the LaTeX document too. However, if your .bib file was elsewhere (which makes sense if you intend to maintain a centralized database of references for all your research), you need to specify the path as well, e.g \bibliography{/some/where/sample} or \bibliography{../sample1} (if the .bib file is in the parent directory of the .tex document that calls it).

Now that LaTeX and BibTeX know where to look for the appropriate files, actually citing the references is fairly trivial. The \cite{ ref_key } is the command you need, making sure that the ref_key corresponds exactly to one of the entries in the .bib file. If you wish to cite more than one reference at the same time, do the following: \cite{ ref_key1 , ref_key2 , ..., ref_keyN } .

Why won't LaTeX generate any output? [ edit | edit source ]

The addition of BibTeX adds extra complexity for the processing of the source to the desired output. This is largely hidden from the user, but because of all the complexity of the referencing of citations from your source LaTeX file to the database entries in another file, you actually need multiple passes to accomplish the task. This means you have to run LaTeX a number of times. Each pass will perform a particular task until it has managed to resolve all the citation references. Here's what you need to type (into command line):

• latex latex_source_code.tex
• bibtex latex_source_code.aux

(Extensions are optional, if you put them note that the bibtex command takes the AUX file as input.)

After the first LaTeX run, you will see errors such as:

The next step is to run bibtex on that same LaTeX source (or more precisely the corresponding AUX file, however not on the actual .bib file) to then define all the references within that document. You should see output like the following:

The third step, which is invoking LaTeX for the second time will see more errors like " LaTeX Warning: Label(s) may have changed. Rerun to get cross-references right. ". Don't be alarmed, it's almost complete. As you can guess, all you have to do is follow its instructions, and run LaTeX for the third time, and the document will be output as expected, without further problems.

If you want a pdf output instead of a dvi output you can use pdflatex instead of latex as follows:

• pdflatex latex_source_code.tex

Note that if you are editing your source in vim and attempt to use command mode and the current file shortcut (%) to process the document like this:

• :! pdflatex %
• :! bibtex %

You will get an error similar to this:

• I couldn't open file name 'current_file.tex.aux'

It appears that the file extension is included by default when the current file command (%) is executed. To process your document from within vim, you must explicitly name the file without the file extension for bibtex to work, as is shown below:

• :! bibtex %:r (without file extension, it looks for the AUX file as mentioned above)

Another option exists if you are running Unix/Linux or any other platform where you have make . Then you can simply create a Makefile and use vim's make command or use make in shell. The Makefile would then look like this:

Frequently occuring errors are:

• Bibtex is irritated by spaces in the bibliography file's name. Spaces in file names are not allowed with BibTeX, other limitations such as a maximal path length of 40 characters are valid too. Solution: Copy the bib file into your folder or rename folders to names without spaces.
• Empty bibliography: Did you cite something in the document (search for \cite or similar words)? Otherwise, LaTeX will not generate a bibliography in the PDF. Solutions: Use \nocite{*} to list all entries in the bibliography, without regard to whether they are cited or not. Or simply: Cite something.
• BibTeX keeps complaining over an entry with quotation marks despite the syntax looks correct? It may be that the quotation marks are similar looking, but wrong characters. (" vs. ''). Solution: Try to exchange the quotation marks with their correct counterparts.

Including URLs in bibliography [ edit | edit source ]

As you can see, there is no field for URLs. One possibility is to include Internet addresses in howpublished field of @misc or note field of @techreport , @article , @book :

howpublished = "\url{http://www.example.com}"

Note the usage of \url command to ensure proper appearance of URLs .

Another way is to use special field url and make bibliography style recognise it.

url = "http://www.example.com"

You need to use \usepackage{url} in the first case or \usepackage{hyperref} in the second case.

Styles provided by Natbib (see below) handle this field, other styles can be modified using urlbst program. Modifications of three standard styles (plain, abbrv and alpha) are provided with urlbst.

If you need more help about URLs in bibliography, visit FAQ of UK List of TeX .

Customizing bibliography appearance [ edit | edit source ]

One of the main advantages of BibTeX, especially for people who write many research papers, is the ability to customize your bibliography to suit the requirements of a given publication. You will notice how different publications tend to have their own style of formatting references, to which authors must adhere if they want their manuscripts published. In fact, established journals and conference organizers often will have created their own bibliography style (.bst file) for those users of BibTeX, to do all the hard work for you.

It can achieve this because of the nature of the .bib database, where all the information about your references is stored in a structured format, but nothing about style. This is a common theme in LaTeX in general, where it tries as much as possible to keep content and presentation separate.

A bibliography style file ( .bst ) will tell LaTeX how to format each attribute, what order to put them in, what punctuation to use in between particular attributes etc. Unfortunately, creating such a style by hand is not a trivial task. Which is why Makebst (also known as custom-bib ) is the tool we need.

Makebst can be used to automatically generate a .bst file based on your needs. It is very simple, and actually asks you a series of questions about your preferences. Once complete, it will then output the appropriate style file for you to use.

It should be installed with the LaTeX distribution (otherwise, you can download it ) and it's very simple to initiate. At the command line, type:

LaTeX will find the relevant file and the questioning process will begin. You will have to answer quite a few (although, note that the default answers are pretty sensible), which means it would be impractical to go through an example in this tutorial. However, it is fairly straight-forward. And if you require further guidance, then there is a comprehensive manual available. I'd recommend experimenting with it and seeing what the results are when applied to a LaTeX document.

If you are using a custom built .bst file, it is important that LaTeX can find it! So, make sure it's in the same directory as the LaTeX source file, unless you are using one of the standard style files (such as plain or plainnat , that come bundled with LaTeX - these will be automatically found in the directories that they are installed. Also, make sure the name of the .bst file you want to use is reflected in the \bibliographystyle{style} command (but don't include the .bst extension!).

Localizing bibliography appearance [ edit | edit source ]

When writing documents in languages other than English, you may find it desirable to adapt the appearance of your bibliography to the document language. This concerns words such as editors , and , or in as well as a proper typographic layout. The babelbib package can be used here. For example, to layout the bibliography in German, add the following to the header:

Alternatively, you can layout each bibliography entry according to the language of the cited document:

The language of an entry is specified as an additional field in the BibTeX entry:

For babelbib to take effect, a bibliography style supported by it - one of babplain , babplai3 , babalpha , babunsrt , bababbrv , and bababbr3 - must be used:

Showing unused items [ edit | edit source ]

Usually LaTeX only displays the entries which are referred to with \cite . It's possible to make uncited entries visible:

Getting bibliographic data [ edit | edit source ]

Many online databases provide bibliographic data in BibTeX-Format, making it easy to build your own database. For example, Google Scholar offers the option to return properly formatted output, which can also be turned on in the settings page.

One should be alert to the fact that bibliographic databases are frequently the product of several generations of automatic processing, and so the resulting BibTex code is prone to a variety of minor errors, especially in older entries.

Helpful tools [ edit | edit source ]

• BibDesk BibDesk is a bibliographic reference manager for Mac OS X. It features a very usable user interface and provides a number of features like smart folders based on keywords and live tex display.
• BibSonomy — A free social bookmark and publication management system based on BibTeX.
• BibTeXSearch BibTeXSearch is a free searchable BibTeX database spanning millions of academic records.
• Bibtex Editor - An online BibTeX entry generator and bibliography management system. Possible to import and export Bibtex files.
• Bibwiki Bibwiki is a Specialpage for MediaWiki to manage BibTeX bibliographies. It offers a straightforward way to import and export bibliographic records.
• cb2Bib The cb2Bib is a tool for rapidly extracting unformatted, or unstandardized bibliographic references from email alerts, journal Web pages, and PDF files.
• Citavi Commercial software (with size-limited free demo version) which even searches libraries for citations and keeps all your knowledge in a database. Export of the database to all kinds of formats is possible. Works together with MS Word and Open Office Writer. Moreover plug ins for browsers and Acrobat Reader exist to automatically include references to your project.
• DokuWiki DokuWiki is a Bibtext plugin that allows for the inclusion of bibtex formatted citations in DokuWiki pages and displays them in APA format. Note: This Plugins is vulnerable to an XSS attack -> http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:bibtex
• Ebib — a BibTeX database manager for Emacs , well resolved and never more than a few keystrokes away.
• JabRef is a Java program (under the GPL license) which lets you search many bibliographic databases such as Medline, Citeseer, IEEEXplore and arXiv and feed and manage your BibTeX local databases with your selected articles. Based on BiBTeX, JabRef can export in many other output formats such as html, MS Word or EndNote.
• KBib Another BibTeX editor for KDE. It has similar capabilities, and slightly different UI. Features include BibTeX reference generation from PDF files, plain text, DOI, arXiv & PubMed IDs. Web queries to Google Scholar, PubMer, arXiv and a number of other services are also supported.
• KBibTeX KBibTeX is a BibTeX editor for KDE to edit bibliographies used with LaTeX. Features include comfortable input masks, starting web queries (e. g. Google or PubMed) and exporting to PDF, PostScript, RTF and XML/HTML. As KBibTeX is using KDE's KParts technology, KBibTeX can be embedded into Kile or Konqueror.
• Literatur-Generator is a German-language online tool for creating a bibliography (Bibtex, Endnote, Din 1505, ...).
• Mendeley Mendeley is cost-free academic software for managing PDFs which can manage a bibliography in Open Office and read BibTeX.
• Qiqqa Qiqqa is a free research manager that has built-in support for automatically associating BibTeX records with your PDFs and a 'BibTeX Sniffer' for helping you semi-automatically find BibTeX records.
• Referencer Referencer is a Gnome application to organise documents or references, and ultimately generate a BibTeX bibliography file.
• Synapsen — Hypertextual Card Index / Reference Manager with special support for BiBTeX / biblatex, written in Java.
• Zotero Zotero is a free and open reference manager working as a standalone application, capable of importing and exporting bib files. Zotero has browser plugins for Chrome and Firefox.

Summary [ edit | edit source ]

Although it can take a little time to get to grips with BibTeX, in the long term, it's an efficient way to handle your references. It's not uncommon to find .bib files on websites that people compile as a list of their own publications, or a survey of relevant works within a given topic, etc. Or in those huge, online bibliography databases, you often find BibTeX versions of publications, so it's a quick cut-and-paste into your own .bib file, and then no more hassle!

Having all your references in one place can be a big advantage. And having them in a structured form, that allows customizable output is another one. There are a variety of free utilities that can load your .bib files, and allow you to view them in a more efficient manner, as well as sort them and check for errors.

Bibliography in the table of contents [ edit | edit source ]

If you are writing a book or report , you'll likely insert your bibliography using something like:

Or, if you are using BibTeX, your references will be saved in a .bib file, and your TeX document will include the bibliography by these commands:

Both of these examples will create a chapter-like (or section-like) output showing all your references. But even though the resulting “References” looks like a chapter or section, it will not be handled quite the same: it will not appear in the Table of Contents.

Using tocbibind [ edit | edit source ]

The most comfortable way of adding your bibliography to the table of contents is to use the dedicated package tocbibind that works with many standard document classes. Simply include this code in the preamble of your document:

This will include the Bibliography in the Table of Contents without numbering. If you want to have proper numbering, include the following code in the preamble:

The tocbibind package can also handle including the List of Figures, List of Tables and the Table of Contents itself in the Table of Contents. It has many options for numbering, document structure etc. to fit almost any scenario. See the tocbibind CTAN page for detailed documentation.

Other methods [ edit | edit source ]

As unnumbered item [ edit | edit source ].

If you want your bibliography to be in the table of contents, just add the following two lines just before the thebibliography environment:

(OR \addcontentsline { toc }{ section }{ Bibliography } if you're writing an article )

The first line just terminates the current paragraph and page. If you are writing a book , use \cleardoublepage to match the style used. The second line will add a line in the Table of Contents (first option, toc ), it will be like the ones created by chapters (second option, chapter ), and the third argument will be printed on the corresponding line in the Table of Contents; here Bibliography was chosen because it's the same text the thebibliography environment will automatically write when you use it, but you are free to write whatever you like. If you are using a separate bib file, add these lines between \bibliographystyle and \bibliography .

If you use hyperref package, you should also use the \phantomsection command to enable hyperlinking from the table of contents to bibliography.

This trick is particularly useful when you have to insert the bibliography in the Table of Contents, but it can work for anything. When LaTeX finds the code above, it will record the info as described and the current page number, inserting a new line in the Contents page.

As numbered item [ edit | edit source ]

If you instead want bibliography to be numbered section or chapter, you'll likely use this way:

Another even easier solution is to use \section inside of the \renewcommand block:

You may wish to use \renewcommand* { \refname }{ \vspace* { -1em }} followed by \vspace* { -1em } to counteract the extra space the blank \refname inserts.

If you are using BibTeX, the \bibliography command, and the book or report class, you will need to redefine \bibname instead of \refname like so.

biblatex [ edit | edit source ]

As we said before, biblatex is widely considered the successor of BibTeX. Intended as a full replacement for BibTeX, it is more configurable in its output and provides a multitude of new styles (for output) and fields (for the database) that can be used in a document. For now, refer to its comprehensive documentation on CTAN .

Entry and field types in .bib files [ edit | edit source ]

The following table shows most field types. Some field types are lists, either lists of person names , others are literal lists . A date can either be given in parts or full, some keys are necessary, page references are provided as ranges and certain special fields contain verbatim code. There are many kinds of titles .

Some entry types are hard to distinguish and are treated the same by standard styles:

• @article is the same as hypothetic * @inperiodical and therefore encompasses existing @suppperiodical
• @inbook = @bookinbook = @suppbook
• @collection = @reference
• @mvcollection = @mvreference
• @incollection = @suppcollection = @inreference
• @online = @electronic = @www
• @report = @techreport
• @thesis = @mastersthesis = @phdthesis

Some field types are defined, but the documentation does not say which entry types they can be used with. This is either because they depend on another field being set to be useful or they can always be used in a user-defined manner, but will never be used in standard styles:

• abstract , annotation
• entrysubtype
• origdate , origlocation , origpublisher
• origtitle , reprinttitle , indextitle
• pagination , bookpagination
• shortauthor , shorteditor , shorthand , shorthandintro , shortjournal , shortseries shorttitle

The only field that is always mandatory, is title . All entry types also require either date or year and they specify which of author and editor they expect or whether they can use both. Some field types can optionally be used with any entry type:

• addendum , note

All physical (print) entry types share further optional field types:

• eprint , eprintclass , eprinttype

Multimedia entry types

• @performance

and legal entry types

• @commentary
• @jurisdiction
• @legislation

are defined, but not yet supported (well).

The entry types @bibnote , @set and @xdata are special.

Printing bibliography [ edit | edit source ]

Presuming we have defined our references in a file called references.bib, we add this to biblatex by adding the following to the preamble:

Print the bibliography with this macro (usually at the end of the document body):

Printing separate bibliographies [ edit | edit source ]

We want to separate the bibliography into papers, books and others

If the bib entries are located in multiple files we can add them like this:

We can also filter on other fields, such as entrysubtype. If we define our online resources like this:

we filter with \printbibliography [title={Online resources}, subtype=inet]

Example with prefix keys, subheadings and table of contents [ edit | edit source ]

As the numbering of the bibliographies are independent, it can be useful to also separate the bibliographies using prefixnumbers such as a, b and c. In addition we add a main heading for the bibliographies and add that to the table of contents.

To make Hyperref links point to the correct bibliography section, we also add \phantomsection before printing each bibliography

To add each of the bibliographies to the table of contents as sub-sections to the main Bibliography, replace heading=subbibliography with heading=subbibintoc .

Multiple bibliographies [ edit | edit source ]

Using multibib [ edit | edit source ].

This package is for multiple Bibliographies for different sections in your work. For example, you can generate a bibliography for each chapter. You can find information about the package on CTAN [2]

Using bibtopic [ edit | edit source ]

The bibtopic-Package [3] is created to split the citations among more files, so that you can divide the bibliography into more parts. It generates a separate aux file for each bibliography section, so you will have to run bibtex on each of those (see the package documentation for more details).

Notes and references [ edit | edit source ]

• ↑ The biblatex manual
• ↑ http://ctan.org/pkg/multibib
• ↑ http://ctan.org/pkg/bibtopic

This page uses material from Andy Roberts' Getting to grips with LaTeX with permission from the author.

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Getting Started with LaTeX

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Introduction

Since LaTeX is often used to create academic works that will cite many different sources it is important to know how to create a bibliography in LaTeX.  With a little practice and the help of a citation management creating LaTeX bibliographies can be very easy. 

It is strongly recommend that you use a citation management tool, not only to help create LaTeX bibliographies, but to help organize and track articles, books, and other documents throughout your academic career.  For more information about citation management tools take a look at the Citation Management Guide .

Important note:  When creating a bibliography you will need to compile the document twice in order to create properly formatted references.

Creating a Bibliography

There are two parts to creating a bibliography in a LaTeX document.  

Part one is the creation of a separate  .bib file.

This file contains all of the citation information (i.e. title, author, publication date, publisher, etc... ), as will as, a bibID for each citation.  It is strongly recommended to use a citation management tool to create your .bib files.  Those tools will greatly speed up the process and help keep the file organized, generate automatic bibIDs ( which can be edited if desired), and auto fill all relevant data fields which will prevent typos or bugs within the file.  Below is an example of the .bib format for four different common references if you choose to entire them yourself.  Note that not all fields are required and any unused field should be deleted .   The  bibID  is what is used in the main  LaTeX  document to create in-line  references  as well as completed bibliographies.  When  creating  the final  bibliography   LaTeX  will only include citations that were  referenced  in the  document , so its ok to have unused citations in your  .bib  file .

Part two is integrating the information from the.bib file into your main LaTeX document.  

The three ways for doing so are using BibTex , BibTex with natbib , or BibLaTeX .  The hyperlinks will take you to explanation of each method from sharelatex.com.  Both BibTex with natbib and BibLaTeX have the advantage of optional arguments because they require a  \usepackage[]{} command.  These optional arguments can be used to fine tune how references appear throughout the document and the formatting of the bibliography.   Below is a table that highlights some of the important difference for each method.  

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• Getting Started
• Basics of a LaTeX File
• Installing LaTeX & Editors
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Create a Bibliography

Example command:

\bibliographystyle{plain} \usepackage{plain}

The \bibliographystyle command tells LaTEX which style to use for the bibliography. The bibliography style called <style>, is defined in the file <style>.bst. This example demonstrates how you use the \bibliographystyle command to select a bibliography style called plain. While not required, it is a good idea to put the \bibliographystyle command in the preamble of your document. The bibliography style plain requires the additional package plain, which explains why the additional command \usepackage{plain} is used in the example.

End-of-Chapter Bibliographies

1. Import biblatex with your favourite options

\usepackage[<options>]{biblatex}

2. Specify the names of your bibliography database(s).

\addbibresource{<your .bib file names>}

3. Add a refsection environment for each chapter and print the bibliography at the end of the chapter.

\chapter{From K\"onigsberg to G\"ottingen} \begin{refsection} … % Lots of text and citations omitted. \printbibliography[heading=subbibliography] \end{refsection}

4. Run latex on your LaTEX source file. This will create an auxiliary file for each refsection with a \printbibligraphy command in it. The names of theses auxiliary files are of the form <base name><number>- blx.aux, where <base name> is the base name of your main document.

5. Run bibtex on each auxiliary file. 

6. Run LaTEX twice.

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Citation Management and Writing Tools: LaTeX and BibTeX

• LaTeX and BibTeX
• Other Citation Tools
• LaTeX & BibTeX & Overleaf
• Zotero & BibTeX
• Mendeley & BibTeX
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LaTeX & BibTeX (& Overleaf)

What is LaTeX?

LaTeX is a typesetting program that takes a plain text file with various commands in it and converts it to a formatted document based on the commands that it has been given. The source file for the document has a file extension of .tex. It is widely used at MIT for theses and other technical papers due to its prowess with mathematical and foreign characters. For more information on LaTeX, see  LaTeX on Athena Basics , provided by the Athena On-Line Help system.

What is BibTeX?

BibTeX is a bibliographic tool that is used with LaTeX to help organize the user's references and create a bibliography. A BibTeX user creates a bibliography file that is separate from the LaTeX source file, wth a file extension of .bib. Each reference in the bibliography file is formatted with a certain structure and is given a "key" by which the author can refer to in the source .tex file.  For more information on BibTeX, see  see MIT IS&T's page:  How do I Create Bibliographies in LaTeX .

Overleaf at MIT

If you're new to LaTeX/BibTeX, consider using Overleaf ,  an online LaTeX and Rich Text collaborative writing and publishing tool. It includes built-in features to link your Zotero or Mendeley library to your LaTeX document .

MIT Libraries provides Overleaf Pro+ accounts for all MIT faculty, students and staff. Learn more on how to get started with Overleaf.  

Zotero & BibTeX

Export from Zotero to BibTeX:

• To export all of the references in a certain library to BibTeX, click on the Actions drop-down menu in Zotero and select "Export Library..."
• To export only certain references, select those references using control-clicks and shift-clicks, then right click one of them and select "Export Selected Items..."
• From the dialog box that pops up, select the BibTeX format, and click OK.
• Navigate to the directory where you are storing your manuscript (your .tex file), and save the file. This will generate a file in the appropriate format for BibTeX to read and create a bibliography from.

Auto-syncing from Zotero to BibTeX:

Auto-updating your .bib file when you make changes or additions to your Zotero Library is not available directly in Zotero. You can, however, install and enable a Zotero extension,  Better BibTeX , to enable these features. 

• Once Better BibTeX is enabled, select the folder/library/items you wish to include in your .bib file as you would do in the basic export process described above.
• In the export dialog box, you will now see many more options for your export format. Select the “Better BibTeX” option, and, to set up the auto sync, make sure you also check the “Keep updated” box.
• Click Ok, name your .bib file and save in the same location as your LaTeX file.

You can adjust or remove a .bib auto sync of Zotero records at any time by going to your Zotero preferences and clicking on the Better BibTeX tab, followed by the Automatic export tab.

For more detailed instructions on setting up your Zotero export, see the  Zotero and BibTeX Quick Guide .

Linking with Overleaf:

In Overleaf, you can link your entire library or a Group library to your Overleaf project. This link allows you to have synced records with Zotero while actively accessing them in Overleaf. More information on linking your Zotero and Overleaf accounts may be found on this Overleaf How-To Guide .

Mendeley & BibTeX

Export to BibTeX:

• Within your Library in Mendeley Reference Manager, select the references that you would like to export to BibTeX.
• In the dropdown menu in the toolbar at the top of the screen, click File > Export All > BibTeX (*.bib)
• Make sure you save your BibTeX file to the same location as your LaTeX file.

In Overleaf, you can link your entire library or a subset of your records to your Overleaf project. This link allows you to have synced records with Mendeley while actively accessing them in Overleaf. More information on linking your Mendeley and Overleaf accounts may be found on this Overleaf How-To Guide .

JabRef & BibTeX

If you primarily create documents in LaTeX (versus a word processing software like Microsoft Word) you may want to consider using JabRef as your primary citation management software.

JabRef is a reference manager that acts as an interface to the BibTeX style used by the LaTeX typesetting system. JabRef is open source and is freely downloadable. The graphical interface allows the user to easily import, edit, search, and group citations in the BibTeX format. It also offers automatic citation key generation. JabRef does not offer any citation styles of its own; instead the citation is generated from the BibTeX file by LaTeX. Specifications for each style are given by the chosen style file.

JabRef can be used on Windows, Linux, and Mac.

For more detailed instructions on setting up JabRef as your LaTeX citation management software, see the JabRef Getting Started guidance .

Get help with LaTeX and BibTeX

• Zotero and BibTeX Quick Guide

LaTeX resources at MIT

LaTeX on Athena, Basics  (IS&T)

How do I create bibliographies in LaTeX?  (IS&T)

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BibTeX, natbib, biblatex: Managing Citations in LaTeX: Citation Styles in LaTeX

• LaTeX Bibliography Resources
• Bibliography Packages
• Citation Styles in LaTeX
• Zotero and LaTeX
• Troubleshooting
• Workshop Notes

But what about importing from databases?

Some tools, like the Astrophysics Data System (ADS), Inspec, and Google Scholar, make exporting to BibTeX user-friendly. They escape special characters and generate citation keys for you. Other tools are a bit less straightforward. 

In general, the BibTeX export will be located in either an "export" or "cite" menu just above your search results. The cite menu is sometimes activated with an icon that looks like a quotation mark. It can be more effective to use a reference management tool like Zotero to manage your references, so we recommend taking a look at that tab for more information on semi-automated ways to manage your references.

Here are some additional pages with specialized information for you.

• TeXMed - a BibTeX interface for PubMed TeXMed is just an interface to NCBI PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, that allows you to query PubMed and to store references in BibTeX format.
• Documentation on Web of Knowledge/Web of Science for BibTeX Citations Quick summary: Once you've found a citation you want to save, just go to the bottom of the article information page and export using the options in the Output Record box.
• Documentation on Exporting to BibTeX in ProQuest Quick summary: Click the Cite button in the light blue bar above your search results. A box will come up that will walk you through citing the resource(s). Select BibTeX as your citation style, then press the orange "Change" button. Copy the citation to your .bib file. NOTE THAT YOU WILL NEED TO PROVIDE THE IDENTIFIERS FOR EXPORTED CITATIONS.

Other Resources

• Choosing a BibTeX Style Reed College has provided several modified versions of APA, MLA, and Chicago. Click on the name of the style you want to download under the Styles Recommended by Reed section. Place the style in the directory of your paper.
• Online BibTeX Tidy This tool tidies bibtex files by fixing inconsistent whitespace and special characters, removing duplicates, removing unwanted fields, and sorting entries. It has a lot of options in the right-hand column to help you with messy BibTeX files.
• Using EndNote with LaTeX [HTML web log] A quick, easy guide to using .bib files and EndNote at the same time.
• Using Overleaf with RefWorks A quick guide from Overleaf on using RefWorks.

Finding a Citation Style

The LaTeX Bibliography Resources page includes information about LaTeX templates, many of which include a bibliography style and sample bib file to get you started. If you need to locate another style, though, here are some instructions. Please note that templates built for BibTeX + natbib will not always easily translate to ones built for biber/Biblatex if the template is complex.

We start by searching for filetype:bst and the name of whatever we're looking for. In the example search, I'm looking for the style for Geophysical Research . If you are using biber, you can look for a bbx style file with filetype:bbx .

You should see a variety of results that all have that filetype. Use online savviness to avoid clicking on results that might not be safe — we're dealing with code files, after all. Many people will put style files on GitHub or on their academic personal websites. Often, the creator will upload the style file as a text document that you can copy-paste into Overleaf or save into the directory you're working from on your computer.

Please note that many of these styles are generated using command line utilities. Take note of what was used (in this case,  docstrip ) so that you can search for it if you need to debug. Some of the command line-generated style files will cause package conflicts. See the Troubleshooting tab on this guide for a common example.

Once you have pasted in the contents, you're fine to add it to the document preamble.

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Mastering Bibliography Styles in LaTeX/Overleaf: A Quick Guide for BibTeX, natbib, and BibLaTeX

Do you use LaTeX or Overleaf and need help customizing bibliography styles for your documents? Whether in BibTeX, natbib, or BibLaTeX, bibliography style customization can be slightly confusing initially, especially as the style names could be clear guides. We will show you how to change the bibliography style in each system, with the essential styles listed in a table. As there are three options in LaTeX (and therefore in Overleaf), we will go from the classic BibTeX to the versatile natbib to the modern BibLaTeX; you will find here a step-by-step guide to customize your bibliography to your needs. Let’s dive in and uncover the secrets of bibliography styles in LaTeX!

Need a simple solution for managing your BibTeX entries? Explore CiteDrive!

• Web-based, modern reference management
• Collaborate and share with fellow researchers
• Integration with Overleaf
• Comprehensive BibTeX/BibLaTeX support
• Save articles and websites directly from your browser
• Search for new articles from a database of tens of millions of references

BibTeX relies on .bst (BibTeX Style) files to format the bibliography style in your .tex documents. To change the style, you need to change the .bst file being used.

Locate or Choose a .bst File : Find an appropriate .bst file that corresponds to the style you desire. Common styles include plain , abbrv , alpha , etc. Alternatively, you can find or create custom .bst files.

Define the .bst File in the LaTeX Document :

BibTeX style examples

Run BibTeX : After making changes to your LaTeX document, run BibTeX to generate the bibliography. The command typically looks like this:

Compile LaTeX Document : Finally, compile your LaTeX document with LaTeX again (and possibly multiple times to resolve cross-references).

natbib is a package for bibliographies that provides additional citation commands and flexibility. To change the bibliography style with natbib:

Choose a Citation Style : natbib provides several citation styles such as plainnat , abbrvnat , etc. You can use BibTeX styles with natbib, but you may find that the following styles offer more functionality.

Define the bibliography Style in the LaTeX Document : Also, import the natbib package with the desired style:

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Referencing, Citing, and Structuring Bibliographies

• Referencing Styles
• EndNote Basic
• Using Zotero with LaTeX
• Using Mendeley with LaTeX

Further Useful Links

• MIT Quick Guide to Zotero & BibTeX
• Princeton University Guide on Zotero & BibTex
• University of Melbourne's Guide on Zotero and LaTeX Much thanks and appreciation must go to the University of Melbourne, as much of this guidance has been adapted from their excellent guides!
• University of Melbourne Guide on Zotero and Overleaf

Rather than having to edit your BibTeX bibliographic entries manually, you can manage your references with a  reference management program , such as Zotero, and then export references in BibTeX format.

Zotero provides LaTeX users with two options for exporting a BibTeX file.

The first is simpler and suitable for users who do not need to make changes to their BibTeX file once generated. The second however enables users to auto-sync their Zotero and BibTeX.

Simple Method:

• Create your Zotero reference list. If you require help on how to use Zotero, please refer to this  LibGuide . 
• Select your required references by using the  Ctrl  button and left clicking or select all references by using  Ctrl  and  a  
• Click the  File  tab, then  Export  Library
• Change the format to  BibTeX  by clicking the drop down File options
•  Ensure  Export Notes  is ticked then click  OK
• The file will automatically add a .bib extension, change the file name as required then save the file into the same folder as your LaTeX document.

The Second Method:

The benefits of this method include being able to keep your .bib file  automatically updating  as new references are added to the Zotero manager. In the simple method, the user has to re download the .bib file each time they need to add a new reference.

This method also allows the user to give the reference a  custom citation key  as the simple method auto generates a very long and sometimes cumbersome key that contains a large amount of characters. 

• Zotero does not already contain the files needed for this extension method so the user needs to install and enable the  Better BibTeX  add-on. 
• Installation instructions can be found at the bottom of this step-by-step process.   
• Download the latest add-on by clicking on the ' latest .xpi file ' link the installation instructions. At the time of writing this guide the full file name is zotero-better-bibtex-1.6.75.xpi but this will change with newer releases. 
• Install  Better BibTeX  by clicking on the xpi file if it does not automatically start

Zotero Standalone

• The .xpi file will not automatically run in the standalone Zotero
• Open Zotero manager
• Click the  Tools  tab, then  Add-ons
• Next select  Extensions
• Click on the gear or the settings icon in the top right hand corner and select  Install Add-on From File
• Select the .xpi file you just downloaded then click  Install
• If it does not already prompt you to do so, restart Zotero
• For both the web and standalone version,  Export  the required references similar to the simple method
• This time however the  Export  pop up box will have a fourth option for you to tick  Keep Updated . 
• Tick both the  Keep updated  box and the  Export notes  box and save as a .bib file in the same folder as your LaTeX document
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• Last Updated: May 7, 2024 1:37 PM
• URL: https://libguides.rhul.ac.uk/referencing

Natbib Tutorial: Mastering Reference Management in LaTeX with BibTeX

Managing bibliographic references in LaTeX becomes streamlined and efficient with the natbib package. Whether you’re working with the traditional \cite{*} command or diving deep into advanced citation methods, this guide provides foundational insights to get you started.

Need a simple solution for managing your BibTeX entries? Explore CiteDrive!

• Web-based, modern reference management
• Collaborate and share with fellow researchers
• Integration with Overleaf
• Comprehensive BibTeX/BibLaTeX support
• Save articles and websites directly from your browser
• Search for new articles from a database of tens of millions of references

Introduction to natbib and Its Strengths

The natbib package extends the capabilities of the standard \cite{*} command in LaTeX. It particularly shines in in-text citations with various options and customizations, especially for author-year schemes and displaying textual and parenthetical citations when integrated with BibTeX.

Let’s delve into the details of how to harness the power of natbib to format and cite your bibliographic sources.

Kickstarting Your Journey: Parenthetical and Textual/Narrative In-Text Citations with natbib

Setting up natbib requires a similar structure to the standard LaTeX setup. Start by loading the library using \usepackage{natbib} . The library offers several configuration options via \usepackage[options]{natbib} , discussed in detail below. The primary citation commands in Natbib are \citet{*} for textual/narrative citations and \citep{*} for parenthetical citations.

By using \bibliography{sample} , you point LaTeX towards your .bib-file, which contains bibliographic entries like:

For those inclined towards numeric citation styles, here’s how you adapt natbib:

Deep Dive: Exploring the cite{*} Commands in natbib

Understanding the range of cite{*} commands provided by natbib allows you to cite sources efficiently. This table breaks down their outputs:

Other natbib commands, such as \citealp and \citealt , offer additional flexibility by suppressing brackets. Discover the entire range of commands in the Reference sheet for natbib usage .

Appendix: Mastering the Options for natbib

When working with natbib , customizing its behavior can make your workflow smoother. Here’s a breakdown of the options available via \usepackage[options]{natbib} :

Further Reading and Sources

• Dive deeper into bibliography management with Bibliography management with natbib on Overleaf.
• Familiarize yourself with different bibliography styles with Natbib bibliography styles on Overleaf.
• For a handy cheat sheet, check out the Reference sheet for natbib usage .

Wrapping Up

Harnessing natbib with BibTeX simplifies reference management in LaTeX. This guide offered a comprehensive walkthrough from basic setups to intricate citation styles. For more insights into LaTeX and its many functionalities, explore our collection of in-depth guides.

Bibliography with LaTeX

• First Online: 28 June 2017

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The provision for labeling and referring various numbered materials, like sectional units, environments, foot notes, enumerated items, page numbers, etc., is discussed in the previous relevant Hours. Apart from that, LATEX can generate very elegant bibliographic references on its own. A list of bibliographic references is generated either directly entering the detail of the references in the LaTeX input file, or combining LATEX with its companion program BibTEX. The former provision is discussed in this Hour (the latter is discussed in Hour 15 ).

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If the bibliographic reference list is produced through the thebibliography environment, superscribed citations of the references can be obtained just upon loading the overcite package.

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Datta, D. (2017). Bibliography with LaTeX. In: LaTeX in 24 Hours. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47831-9_14

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LaTeX & BibTeX

LaTeX is a specific document preparation system that allows for high-quality typesetting and is especially useful for technical and scientific documentation. The University of Twente is providing  access to Overleaf , a collaborative online LaTeX editor. For managing references in Overleaf, the BibTeX extension format is used, known as *.bib. Most reference managers (e.g. Endnote, Mendeley and Zotero) can export references in the BibTeX format. This guide is focussing on BibTeX in Overleaf. Find more information on other forms of LaTeX on  the LaTeX Project  and  TeX Users Group .

BibTeX basics

BibTeX references are stored in a plain text file (the bibliography database file) with file extension *.bib. Save all references in one file (e.g. references.bib) and upload it to your Overleaf project. New references can be easily added to that file in Overleaf by copy and pasting the reference information in BibTeX format. Some databases offer the export of references in this BibTex format. Always check the entries on completeness and consistency. For example, the export from Google Scholar does not include DOI.

Depending on the source (journal article, book chapter, webpage, etc.), the reference in the *.bib file requires a certain format. Each reference starts with @ to indicate the reference type, followed by curly bracket and a unique citation key. Reference information is added and the reference ends by a closing curly bracket. Standard templates for typical reference types are available. For example for a book:

@book{gratzer2014,   title={Practical LaTeX},   author={Gr{\"a}tzer, George},   year={2014},   publisher={Springer} }

The unique citation key is used for in-text references in the *.tex file with the \cite{} command (e.g. \cite{gratzer2014}). If multiple sources are cited, use a comma to separate the citation keys \cite{gratzer2014, citation2, citation3}). The bibliography can be added anywhere in the *.tex file (usually at the end) by using the command \bibliography{references.bib}. Before adding the bibliography, indicate the reference style in the *.tex file with \bibliographystyle{stylename}, e.g. {apalike} for APA and {IEEEtran} for IEEE. The order in which the references appear, depend on the reference style. Find standard BibTex Bibliography Styles here.

BibTeX and reference managers

It is possible to convert references from your reference manager to BibTeX format. This can also be done when a database does not support download in BibTeX format. In such cases, download the references to your reference manager and then convert them into BibTeX with the export function. Always check the entries in the *.bib file for completeness and assigned reference types. Simply upload the exported file in the project to use it.

If you want to use BibTex extensively in Overleaf, you may want to consider the reference managers Mendeley or Zotero. Use the Mendeley or Zotero plugin to insert your references directly.

In case of errors, read the warning. It usually indicates well what the problem is. The “undefined citation” is a very common warning wherein \cite{} is showing up as question marks (?). Follow this checklist to solve the problem:

• Check if the right *.bib is specified for /bibliography{} and no errors in spelling are made for /cite{}. Only entries spelled as in the *.bib file will appear in the main text and bibliography. It is case sensitive and does not always recognize unusual characters or spaces in file/folder names during the compiling process.
• Check if the bibliography style is a standard or if you need to upload a new style .
• Sometimes it just does not work due to formatting issues. Try adding clearing the document cache by selecting the “recompile from scratch” from the green compile button. Alternatively use the command /typeout{} before the /bibliography{}.

Contact your faculty’s information specialist for any questions on troubleshooting via the button at the bottom of this page.

Online guides

• Bibliography management with BibTex  
• LaTeX-tutorial: BibTex

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• Biblatex citation styles
• 1 Introduction and example
• 2 Citation styles
• 3 Further reading

Introduction and example

Biblatex provides numerous citation styles but if no citation style is set L a T e X uses the one that matches the bibliography style . Here is a minimal example showing use of the biblatex parameter style=alphabetic to set the citation style to alphabetic .

 Open this example in Overleaf (the sample.bib file is created for you).

This example produces the following output:

Citation styles

Standard citation styles include:

• numeric Implements a numeric citation scheme intended for in-text citations. Should be employed in conjunction with the numeric bibliography style .
• numeric-comp Compact variant of the numeric mode. Citations like [1, 2, 3] are replaced by [1-3] .
• numeric-verb Verbose variant of the numeric style. Instead of [2, 5, 7] will print [2];[5];[7] .
• alphabetic Alphabetic citation scheme similar to the standard alpha in style bibtex . To be used in conjunction with the alphabetic bibliography style.
• alphabetic-verb Verbose version of the alphabetic style. Instead of [Doe98, Doe95, Farn2004] will print [Doe98];[Doe95];[Farn2004] .
• authoryear Implements the author-year citation scheme. To be used in conjunction with the author-year bibliography style.
• authoryear-comp Compact variant of the authoryear style. Prints the author only once if subsequent references passed to a single citation command share the same author. Prints Doe 1992, 1995 instead of Doe 1992, Doe 1995 .
• authoryear-ibid A variant of the authoryear intended for footnote citations. Replaces repeated citations by the abbreviation ibidem .
• authoryear-icomp A style combining the features of authoryear-comp and authoryear-ibid
• authortitle Implements the author-title scheme. Intended for citations given in footnotes.
• authortitle-comp Compact variant of authortitle . Instead of Doe, First title; Doe, Second title this will print Doe, First title, Second title .
• authortitle-ibid A variant of the authortitle intended for footnote citations. Replaces repeated citations by the abbreviation ibidem .
• authortitle-icomp A style combining authortitle-comp and authortitle-ibid .
• authortitle-terse Variant of authoritle that only prints the title if the bibliography contains more than one work of the respective author/editor.
• authortitle-tcomp Style combining authortitle-terse and authortitle-comp .
• authortitle-ticomp Style combining authortitle-icomp and authortitle-terse .
• verbose Citation style that prints a full citation when the entry is cited for the first time and a short version afterwards.
• reading Citation style that goes with the bibliography style by the same name. Loads the authortitle style.

There are other non-standard citation styles popular in different journals and thesis

• American Chemical Society (ACS) style
• American Institute of Physics (AIP) style
• American Mathematical Society (AMS) style
• Vancouver system
• Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) style
• Nature style
• Science style
• Chicago Style
• Harvard referencing style
• American Psychological Association (APA) style

(*) this is a new style, see http://ctan.org/pkg/biblatex-phys

Further reading

For more information see

• Bibliography management in LaTeX
• Biblatex bibliography styles
• Biblatex package documentation
• Table of contents
• Management in a large project
• Documentation Home
• Learn LaTeX in 30 minutes

Overleaf guides

• Creating a document in Overleaf
• Uploading a project
• Copying a project
• Creating a project from a template
• Using the Overleaf project menu
• Including images in Overleaf
• Exporting your work from Overleaf
• Working offline in Overleaf
• Using Track Changes in Overleaf
• Using bibliographies in Overleaf
• Sharing your work with others
• Using the History feature
• Debugging Compilation timeout errors
• How-to guides
• Guide to Overleaf’s premium features

LaTeX Basics

• Creating your first LaTeX document
• Choosing a LaTeX Compiler
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• Spacing in math mode
• Integrals, sums and limits
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• List of Greek letters and math symbols
• Mathematical fonts
• Using the Symbol Palette in Overleaf

Figures and tables

• Inserting Images
• Positioning Images and Tables
• Lists of Tables and Figures
• Drawing Diagrams Directly in LaTeX
• TikZ package

References and Citations

• Bibliography management with bibtex
• Bibliography management with natbib
• Bibliography management with biblatex
• Bibtex bibliography styles
• Natbib bibliography styles
• Natbib citation styles
• Multilingual typesetting on Overleaf using polyglossia and fontspec
• Multilingual typesetting on Overleaf using babel and fontspec
• International language support
• Quotations and quotation marks

Document structure

• Sections and chapters
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• Nomenclatures
• Multi-file LaTeX projects
• Lengths in L a T e X
• Headers and footers
• Page numbering
• Paragraph formatting
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• Text alignment
• Page size and margins
• Single sided and double sided documents
• Multiple columns
• Code listing
• Code Highlighting with minted
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• Margin notes
• Font sizes, families, and styles
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• Molecular orbital diagrams
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• Pgfplots package
• Typesetting exams in LaTeX
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• Understanding packages and class files
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• Writing your own class

Advanced TeX/LaTeX

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