TransWikia.com

Citing a piece in the form "Author et al" if main citation style is "numeric"

TeX - LaTeX Asked by Ben25 on July 29, 2021

I build my own .bib file and I use the IEEEtran document class. For bibliography style I’m using:

bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
bibliography{IEEEabrv,mybibfile}

The IEEEtran bibliography style generates numeric citation call-outs — [1], [2], etc.

However, I want to cite some references using the “FirstAuthor et al.” format. For example,

In [20] Jones et al. studied …

Or

some phrases Jones et al.[20] studied … “

How can I do that?

2 Answers

If you can switch from the IEEEtran to the IEEEtranN bibliography style (the N in IEEEtranN stands for natbib), you can make use of natbib's citeauthor and citet macros to generate citation call-outs in the desired format.


Addendum to address the OP's requirement that the string "et al." must be typeset in italics:

I suggest you proceed as follows to achieve this objective:

  • Find the file IEEEtranN.bst in your TeX distribution. Make a copy of this file and call the copy, say, IEEEtranN-ital.bst. (Do not edit an original file of the TeX distribution directly.)

  • Open the file IEEEtranN-ital.bst in a text editor. The program you use to edit your tex files will do fine.

  • In the file IEEEtranN-ital.bst, find the following line (l. 201 in my copy of the file):

    FUNCTION {bbl.etal}{ "et~al." }
    

    Change it to

    FUNCTION {bbl.etal}{ "textit{et~al.}" }
    
  • Save the file IEEEtranN-ital.bst, either in the directory that contains your main tex file or in a directory that's searched by BibTeX. If you select the latter option, be sure to update the filename database of your TeX distribution suitably.

  • In your main tex file, change the instruction

    bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
    

    to

    bibliographystyle{IEEEtranN-ital}
    

    and run a full recompile cycle: LaTeX, BibTeX, and LaTeX twice more. Then, start using the citeauthor and citet instruction as and where needed. (I assume that, so far, your document contains only cite instructions. Please advise if this is not the case.)


The following MWE (minimum working example) loads the hyperref package purely to highlight what's generated by cite, citeauthor, and citet.

enter image description here

documentclass{IEEEtran}

begin{filecontents}[overwrite]{mybibfile.bib}
@misc{jones,
  author  = "Dorothy Jones and Daniela Smith and Dinah Webster",
  title   = "Thoughts",
  year    = 3001,
}
end{filecontents}

usepackage[numbers]{natbib} % 'natbib' is a citation management package
bibliographystyle{IEEEtranN-ital}

usepackage[colorlinks,allcolors=blue]{hyperref} % optional

begin{document}
cite{jones} % standard numeric-style citation call-out

In cite{jones}, citeauthor{jones} studied dots

dots some phrases citet{jones} studied dots % author-number citation call-out

bibliography{mybibfile}
end{document}

Correct answer by Mico on July 29, 2021

I had the similar issue with citet and I have followed the approach suggested by you but, unfortunately et. al is still not in italics. Could you please help me with it.

Answered by Subhani on July 29, 2021

Add your own answers!

Ask a Question

Get help from others!

© 2024 TransWikia.com. All rights reserved. Sites we Love: PCI Database, UKBizDB, Menu Kuliner, Sharing RPP