BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ natbib multiple citation: same authour and year problem
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natbib multiple citation: same authour and year problem
I am using natbib for citations and references.
I am stuck at a point where the automatic function of natbib that should put the same authors, year publication kind of citation at a multiple citing location like 'van Melick et al. 2003a,b' but it is coming up as 'van Melick et al. 2003,?'.
I don't understand why '?' is appearing.
This is the particular citation I am talking about \citep{vanmelick2003a,vanmelick2003b} for the following references in the bibliography:
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\bibitem[van Melick et al.(2003)]{vanmelick2003a} van Melick, H.G.H., Govaert, L.E., Meijer, H.E.H., 2003. On the origin of strain hardening in glassy polymers. Polymer. 44, 2493-2502.
\bibitem[van Melick et al.(2003)]{vanmelick2003b} van Melick, H.G.H., Govaert, L.E., Meijer, H.E.H., 2003. Localisation phenomena in glassy polymers: influence of thermal and mechanical history. Polymer. 44, 3579–3591.
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------------Corresponding warning in log file-----------
Package natbib Warning: Multiple citation on page 6: same authors and year
(natbib) without distinguishing extra letter,
(natbib) appears as question mark
--------------------------------------------------------
I am using the following packages in latex preamble :
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\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{report}
\usepackage{epsfig,amsmath,amsbsy,bm,graphicx,amssymb,latexsym,subfigure}
\usepackage[round,sort,elide]{natbib}
\usepackage{citeref}
\usepackage[dvips,bookmarks,colorlinks=false,breaklinks,pdftitle = {Investigations into Deformation Behavior of Glassy Amorphous Polymers using Molecular Dynamics},pdfauthor = {Dhiraj Kumar Mahajan}]{hyperref}
\usepackage{url}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\usepackage[bf,small]{caption}
\usepackage{rotating}
\setcitestyle{notesep={ }}
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Waiting for some help!!
Kind Regards,
Dhiraj K. Mahajan
http://home.iitk.ac.in/~dhiraj
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- localghost
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natbib multiple citation: same authour and year problem
Best regards and welcome to the board
Thorsten¹
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¹ System: TeX Live 2025 (vanilla), TeXworks 0.6.10
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Re: natbib multiple citation: same authour and year problem
I thought I should not miss anything in my question due to which it became quite long and detailed.
I am sorry if the information I posted exceeded the minimum working example limits.
Anyway, just from another fellow natbib user (Sebastián Peña Saldarriaga from univ-nantes, Fr ) I found the solution. It is to differentiate the citation information of references with same authors and years by adding the alphabets (a,b,c..) just after year of publication.
For my question, the solution is to put the references in the following way:
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\bibitem[van Melick et al.(2003a)]{vanmelick2003a} van Melick, H.G.H., Govaert, L.E., Meijer, H.E.H., 2003. On the origin of strain hardening in glassy polymers. Polymer. 44, 2493-2502.
\bibitem[van Melick et al.(2003b)]{vanmelick2003b} van Melick, H.G.H., Govaert, L.E., Meijer, H.E.H., 2003. Localisation phenomena in glassy polymers: influence of thermal and mechanical history. Polymer. 44, 3579–3591.
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Thanks for your efforts.
Best,
Dhiraj K. Mahajan
- localghost
- Site Moderator
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- Joined: Fri Feb 02, 2007 12:06 pm
natbib multiple citation: same authour and year problem
Quite the opposite. You should learn more about how to build a minimal working example (MWE) and its properties. You didn't post a full and compilable example. That's it.dhirajmahajan wrote:[…] I thought I should not miss anything in my question due to which it became quite long and detailed.
I am sorry if the information I posted exceeded the minimum working example limits. […]
Board Rules
Avoidable Mistakes
¹ System: TeX Live 2025 (vanilla), TeXworks 0.6.10
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- Joined: Sun May 24, 2009 10:53 pm
Re: natbib multiple citation: same authour and year problem
Will never forget the MWE in any forum again from now onwards.

cheers,
Dhiraj