LaTeX forum ⇒ BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ Bibitem entries in BibTeX? Topic is solved

[Jakob123]

Hello,

I'm using BibTeX to cite a couple of journal papers.
However, I would like to add a \bibitem that is not a BibTeX item, which does not seem to be compatible with my BibTeX. How can I accomplish this?

Kind regards,
Jakob

[Ijon Tichy]

You could edit the generated *.bbl file. However, I would recommend to add a proper entry to bibliography.bib.

[Jakob123]

You could edit the generated *.bbl file. However, I would recommend to add a proper entry to bibliography.bib.

Hello, with proper entry in bibliography.bib, are you refering to e.g.:

\bibitem{ref1}

and then in the text \cite{ref1}?

Tried this and it gives a question mark in the text and no entry in the bibliography list.

[Ijon Tichy]

You cannot add \bibitem commands into *.bib files. The entries of *.bib files are always database entries like @book{…}, @article{…}, @misc{…}. See the aleady existing entries of the file or an introduction to BibTeX for the syntax.

\bibitem commands can be found in the *.bbl file generated by BibTeX. But note, if you run BibTex again, manual changes of the *.bbl will be lost. So it would almost ever be better to add a proper entry to the database (*.bib-file) instead of manipulate the generated *.bbl file.

Why do you want to add a \bibitem manually?

BTW: I would almost always recommend to use biblatex and biber instead of BibTeX.

For a more detailed answer I would need a more detailed questions, i.e., a minimal working example.

[Jakob123]

Hello,

Sorry, I am a beginner to overleaf and this was new to me. Will below suffice as a minimum working example?
Essentially I am mainly using papers with possibility of BibTex citation
However, I would like to cite to a webside that does not have a BibTex cite option.
Therefore, I need to somehow add it to be a part of my bibliography.

[Ijon Tichy]

With BibTeX it depends on the \bibliographystyle whether online references are supported. Often you can use either @misc or @manual to reference online.

With biblatex almost all styles support @online, e.g.:

\begin{filecontents}[force]{\jobname.bib}
@article{erickson2009size,
  title={Size and shape of protein molecules at the nanometer level determined by sedimentation, gel filtration, and electron microscopy},
  author={Erickson, Harold P},
  journal={Biological procedures online},
  volume={11},
  number={1},
  pages={32--51},
  year={2009},
  publisher={BioMed Central},
}
@online{Jakob2021,
  title={Bibitem entries in BibTeX?},
  author={Jakob},
  date={2021-04-07},
  url={https://latex.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=50&t=34161&p=114882#p114877},
  urldate={2021-04-07}
}
\end{filecontents}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{document}

\section{Section 1}

This is a minimum working example with a BibTex reference \cite{erickson2009size}. Now I want to refer to a website like \cite{Jakob2021}.

\printbibliography

\end{document}

Note, I've used filecontents to add the database into the main file and make the Run LaTeX here button work. So you can easily see the result. However on Overleaf or a local TeX installation you can always use a separate bib-file as usual.

See the biblatex manual for more information how to use the package and which styles are build in. See the topic link at the biblatex catalogue page for more styles.