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Introduction to BibLaTeX

The package biblatex is currently the most powerful tool for managing citations and reference lists in LaTeX.

Contents

The basics

In addition to the .tex file, you will need a .bib file. The .bib file is your personal database of metadata for sources that you might cite at some point.

Say you create a file bibliography.bib. The content of bibliography.bib looks something like this:

@article
{
    key1,
    author = {...},
    title  = {...},
    ...
}

@book
{
    key2,
    author = {...},
    title  = {...},
    ...
}

The entry for a source starts with @type. The type determines how the entry is formatted in the reference list. Next in the entry is the citation key. The citation key is similar to a label key; it is used internally to refer to the specific entry and it does not appear in the final .pdf. The citation keys can be whatever you want them to be, but it is wise to name them systematically. A recommended naming scheme is the alphabetic style. Following the citation key is a number of optional metadata fields. The field names are not case sensitive, so author = {...}, Author = {...} and AUTHOR = {...} are all valid.

In the .tex file, you must specify the name of the .bib file using \addbibresource. Then you can cite an entry in the .bib file using \cite{key}. The macro \printbibliography prints a reference list containing only the entries that have been cited. The .tex file now looks something like this:

\documentclass{memoir}

\usepackage[backend = biber]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{bibliography.bib}

\begin{document}

    Some text and a citation \cite{key1}.
    More text and a new citation \cite{key2}.

    \printbibliography

\end{document}

Compilation

The backend option passed to biblatex specifies the external program used to compile the reference list. There are three possible values for the backend:

  • biber, which is written for biblatex,
  • bibtex, which is written for the older package bibtex,
  • bibtex8, which is an 8 bit reimplementation of bibtex.

Run the backend between two ordinary compilations. If you want the reference list to appear in the table of contents, compile twice after running the backend.

Compilation sequence:

pdflatex filename.tex
biber filename
pdflatex filename.tex

BibLaTeX vs. BibTeX

The next section is about gathering metadata from databases. Often, these databases has an "export to bibtex" button, not "export to biblatex". The package bibtex is an older bibliography management tool that is still used by many. Both bibtex and biblatex read .bib files, so the metadata exported from the databases can be used out of the box for biblatex as well.

There are many advantages to biblatex over bibtex. For instance, biblatex supports UTF-8, it has a reference type @online (alias @wwww) for web pages, and it is easier to customize. Moreover, biblatex handles multiple reference lists in the same document and automatic language translation with babel. This is possible with bibtex, but requires additional packages.

A major advantage to bibtexover biblatex is that its use is currently more widespread.

Filling the .bib file

While you can enter the metadata for each entry in the .bib file manually, it is easier to copy it from a database. The metadata from databases sometimes contain errors, so you should always proofread the reference list. Below we showcase five sources of metadata. The first two sources are great mathematical subjects, and they have the most trustworthy metadata. The next two are general sources, but the metadata contain errors more frequently. Finally, we end with an example of a journal site that exports metadata. See the subject pages at the University of Oslo Library for more databases.

You can copy the metadata directly from one of the databases and paste it into your .bib file. It is a good idea to change to automatically generated citation key into something that you will remember.

MathSciNet

Once you have selected the desired entry in MathSciNet, click "select alternative format" and then "BibTeX". Sometimes the metadata from MathSciNet contain undefined macros for special characters. These macros are defined by \usepackage{mathscinet}.

Image of MathSciNet Image of MathSciNet

arXiv

Once you have selected the desired entry on arXiv, there are two ways to export metadata. One exports with @misc and the other with @article. The type @article is intended for published papers, so it is not suitable for the preprints on arXiv. It is therefore better to use the @misc version, or change the type to @online.

For @misc, click on "Export citation".

Image of "Export citation"

For @article, click on "NASA ADS" and "Export Citation".

Image of "NASA ADS" Image of "NASA ADS"

Oria

Once you have selected the desired entry in Oria, click "Export BibTeX".

Image of Oria

Google Scholar

Once you have selected the desired entry in Google Scholar, click the quotation marks and then "BibTeX".

Image of Google Scholar

Image of Google Scholar

Journal sites

If you are lucky, the journal offers export capabilities. We illustrate this with ScienceDirect by Elsevier. Once you have selected the desired entry, click "Export" and then "Export citation to BibTeX".

Image of ScienceDirect

Image of ScienceDirect

Citation notes

The \cite command accepts two optional arguments, called prenote and postnotes. These are small remarks added before and after the citation, respectively. Typically, the postnote is used to specify which part of the source you are citing, either by giving the relevant page, section or theorem number. The syntax is as follows:

\cite[postnote]{key1}           % Only postnote
\cite[prenote][postnote]{key2}  % Both pre- and postnote
\cite[prenote][]{key3}          % Only prenote

If the postnote contains only a number, a list of numbers or a range of numbers – either in Arabic or Roman numerals – biblatex assumes that the postnote specifies page numbers and inserts "p." and "pp." as needed.

Notes in optional arguments

The optional argument in a theorem-like environment can be used to specify the origin of the result:

\begin{theorem}[\cite{key}]
    ...
\end{theorem}

However, if you add a postnote to the citation, you get a compilation error:

\begin{theorem}[\cite[Theorem~1.2]{key}]
    ...
\end{theorem}

The solution to this error is to add braces {} around the entire citation:

\begin{theorem}[{\cite[Theorem~1.2]{key}}]
    ...
\end{theorem}

Citation commands

The follow commands work the same way as \cite, but with different output:

  • \parencite – Cite in parentheses.
  • \footcite – Cite in footnote.
  • \authorcite – Cite only author.
  • \titlecite – Cite only title.
  • \yearcite – Cite only year.
  • \urlcite – Cite only URL.

Cite multiple sources

You can cite multiple sources at once by separating the citation keys with comma:

\cite{key1, key2, key3}

You can ensure that the multiple citations are printed in the same order as they appear in the bibliography by adding sortcites = true to \usepackage{biblatex}.

The downside of

\cite{key1, key2, key3}

is that you cannot add individual pre- and postnotes to the different sources. If you need individual pre- and postnotes, use:

\cites[prenote][postnote]{key1}[prenote][postnote]{key2}

The \cites command is not affected by sortcites = true.

Styles

You can change the appearance of citations and the reference list via the optional argument style:

\usepackage[style = alphabetic]{biblatex}

Below are some built-in values for style and an example of how a citation looks:

  • numeric – [1]
  • alphabetic – [Har77]
  • authoryear – Hartshorne 1977
  • authortitle – Hartshorne, Algebraic geometry

More styles can be found hidden here.

Sorting schemes

You can change the order in which the reference list is sorted via the optional argument sorting:

\usepackage[sorting = nty]{biblatex}

Below are different values for sorting:

  • nty – Sort by name, title, year.
  • nyt – Sort by name, year, title.
  • nyvt – Sort by name, year, volume, title.
  • anyt – Sort by alphabetic label, name, year, title.
  • anyvt – Sort by alphabetic label, name, year, volume, title.
  • ynt – Sort by year, name, title.
  • ydnt – Sort by year (descending), name, title.
  • none – Do not sort at all. All entries are processed in citation order.

Shorthand

Sometimes you may want to override the citation style, presumably to make it easier for the reader to recognize the source. For instance, Éléments de géométrie algébrique by Alexandre Grothendieck is well-known among algebraic geometers as EGA. Hence a reader may recognize the source without checking the reference list if the citation reads "[EGA]" rather than "[Gro67]". Likewise, when you are citing software, it is more likely that the reader will recognize the software name rather than a citation based on the authors' names. To overrule the citation style, specify an alternative citation using the shorthand field in the .bib entry:

@misc
{
    M2,
    shorthand    = {Macaulay2},
    author       = {Grayson, Daniel R.
                    and
                    Stillman, Michael E.},
    title        = {Macaulay2},
    howpublished = {Available at \url{http://www.math.uiuc.edu/Macaulay2/}}
}

Further customization

You can remove DOIs, ISBNs and URLs from the reference list by passing doi = false, isbn = false and url = false to biblatex. Note that url = false does not remove the URL from sources with the entry type @online.

The package option giveninits = true ensures that initials are used for all given names in the reference list.

You can specify how many author names are printed before they are replaced with "et al." in a citation with maxcitenames = n. Likewise, use maxbibnames = m to specify the number of author names in the reference list.

Add the following lines to the preamble to print surnames before given names in the reference list:

\DeclareNameAlias{sortname}{family-given}
\DeclareNameAlias{default}{family-given}

Showkeys

The package showkeys displays cite keys (and label keys) in the margin of the .pdf. This allows you to find a key – if you have already used it – without searching through the .bib file.

Image of showkeys

In addition to printing the labels next to the reference list, showkeys prints the label above each citation and cross reference. If you find this to be excessive, disable the latter features using the package options notcite and notref.

Once you are done writing, disable showkeys with the document class option final.

Crediting without BibLaTeX

Mathematicians have adopted the convention to join the names of authors with shared credit using an endash (–). For instance, this is used in the "Navier–Stokes equations" and "Cauchy–Schwarz inquality". The purpose is to distinguish between multiple authors and authors with hyphenated names. Following the convention, it is clear that the "Birch–Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture" is credited to two people, Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer.

Use double hyphens -- to write endash:

Navier--Stokes
Cauchy--Schwarz
Birch--Swinnerton-Dyer

Further reading

Sorted by length.