LaTeX: Troubleshooting Bibliography Citations and References

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Discussion Overview

The discussion revolves around troubleshooting issues with bibliography citations and references in LaTeX, specifically focusing on the use of BibTeX. Participants explore the steps required to generate a bibliography and address problems encountered during the process.

Discussion Character

  • Technical explanation
  • Debate/contested

Main Points Raised

  • One participant describes their experience with LaTeX, noting that while the source code compiles successfully, citation numbers do not appear and the bibliography section is missing.
  • Another participant expresses frustration, mentioning attempts to use various online examples and tools like BibDesk without success.
  • One participant emphasizes the need to run the sequence of commands: latex, bibtex, latex, and then latex again to properly generate the references list.
  • A later reply acknowledges this advice but mentions that despite following the steps, they still faced issues and resorted to manually entering references due to BibTeX's complexity.

Areas of Agreement / Disagreement

Participants do not reach a consensus on the effectiveness of BibTeX, with some expressing frustration and others providing procedural advice. The discussion remains unresolved regarding the best approach to handle bibliography citations in LaTeX.

Contextual Notes

Participants mention potential limitations in their understanding of BibTeX and the specific requirements for generating a bibliography, indicating that there may be missing assumptions or steps in their processes.

Saladsamurai
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I am looking through all sorts of tutorials and I could swear I am doing this right. But obviously not. The source code compiles and generated the PDF just fine, but no citation number shows up (just ?? in stead) and no bibliography section is generated.

Here is a sample code. I know the preamble is obnoxious, but I inherited it from someone else.

Code:
%*****************************************PREAMBLE*********************************
%*******************************CLASSES/PACKAGES*******************************
\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{geometry}                % See geometry.pdf to learn the layout options. There are lots.
\geometry{letterpaper}                   % ... or a4paper or a5paper or ... 
%\geometry{landscape}                % Activate for for rotated page geometry
%\usepackage[parfill]{parskip}    % Activate to begin paragraphs with an empty line rather than an indent
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{epstopdf}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{setspace}		 %allows line space too be changed w/in document
\usepackage{times}			 %change default font to times new roman
\usepackage{indentfirst} 		 %indent 1st line of paragraph after new section
\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage{tocbibind}

%No idea what this does
\DeclareGraphicsRule{.tif}{png}{.png}{`convert #1 `dirname #1`/`basename #1 .tif`.png}

%*****************************************TWEAK OVERALL PAGE LAYOUT*******************************

%change default line spacing: double space = 1.6 And 1.5 space = 1.3  <--go figure
\linespread{1.6}


%number equations according to section number
\numberwithin{equation}{section}		
\setlength\textheight{7.7in}				
\setlength\textwidth{6.5in}			
% Left margin on odd numbered pages + 1 inch
\setlength\oddsidemargin{0in}			
% Left margin on even numbered pages + 1 inch
\setlength\evensidemargin{0in}			
% Amount of indentation at the first line of a paragraph
\setlength\parindent{0.25in}				
% Distance between paragraphs (Any time LaTeX sees a blank line, it treats the next line as the start of a new paragraph)
%\setlength\parskip{0.25in}				

%*****************************************MAIN DOCUMENTt*******************************
\begin{document}

I am trying to cite this article number \cite{Zurek}

\clearpage 
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{ref1}



\end{document}

This is the contents of the bibtex file named ref1.bib I created it and saved it as a .bib file. Did I need to do anything else with it? Like 'run' it or something?

Code:
@ARTICLE{Zurek,
   AUTHOR  = {Zurek, R. W. and Martin, L. J.},
   TITLE   = {Interannual Variability of planet-encircling dust activity on {M}ars},  
   YEAR    = {1993},
   JOURNAL = jgr,
   VOLUME  = {98},
   NUMBER  = {E2},
   PAGES   = {3247--3259}
}
 
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I have no idea why this is not working. I have tried several examples from online including BibDesk and nothing. I might have to do this by hand :/
 
Stating the obvious but: Do you know that you need to run latex, bibtex, latex and then latex again on your source document to generate the references list?
 
Hootenanny said:
Stating the obvious but: Do you know that you need to run latex, bibtex, latex and then latex again on your source document to generate the references list?

Hi Hootenanny :smile: No I did not. But I wound up figuring this out. Unfortunately, BibTex is so temperamental about other stuff, that I had to do my references by hand anyway. I am sure it's great if you have the time to master it, but for writing the one thesis I'll ever write ... I should have just used MS Word

Thanks for replying though!
 

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