BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ BibTeX doesn't abbreviate to “et al.”

[julietbravo]

This is an exact copy of my question at: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/ ... authoryear, which didn't get any replies. Apologies for cross-posting, but I have to finish a PhD thesis

With BibTeX and the harvard/AGSM style, some references (from authors who have multiple papers per year) aren't abbreviated to "et al.", with the addition of a, b, et cetera. For example, with the code attached below, I get:



Only one paper is abbreviated to et al., the others not. Any idea why this is happening? The in-text references should be Basu et al. (2008a) and Basu et al. (2008b), which I believe AGSM should automatically do?

It actually works correctly if both papers (basu2008a, basu2008b) have the exact same authors (result: Basu et al. (2008a,b)), or if one of the papers only has one author (result: Basu et al. (2008), Basu (2008)) or two authors (result; Basu et al. (2008), Basu & Holtslag (2008)). But as soon as it needs to add the a or b, something fails and the full list of authors is writting in-text.

Code: Select all

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{natbib}

\begin{document}

\cite{basu2008a, basu2008b, beare2006}

\bibliographystyle{agsm} 
\bibliography{references.bib}

\end{document}

With Bibtex file:

Code: Select all

@string{jam="J. Appl. Meteor."}
@string{ag="Acta Geop."}
@string{blm="Bound.-Layer Meteor."}

@article{basu2008a,
  author={Basu, S. and Vinuesa, J.-F. and Swift, A.},
  title={Dynamic {LES} modeling of a diurnal cycle},
  journal=jam,
  year={2008},
  volume={47},
  number={4},
  pages={1156-1174}
}

@article{basu2008b,
  author={Basu, S. and Holtslag, A. A. M. and Wiel, B. J. H. and Moene, A. F. and Steeneveld, G. J.},
  title={An inconvenient "truth" about using sensible heat flux as a surface boundary condition in models under stably stratified regimes},
  year={2008},
  journal=ag,
  volume={56},
  number={1},
  pages={88-99}
}

@ARTICLE{beare2006,
 author={Beare,R. J. and Macvean,M. K. and Holtslag,A. A. M. and Cuxart,J. and Esau,I. and Golaz,J. -. and Jimenez,M. A. and Khairoutdinov,M. and Kosovic,B. and Lewellen,D. and Lund,T. S. and Lundquist,J. K. and McCabe,A. and Moene,A. F. and Noh,Y. and Raasch,S. and Sullivan,P.},
 title={An intercomparison of large-eddy simulations of the stable boundary layer},
 journal=blm,
 year={2006},
 volume={118},
 number={2},
 pages={247-272}
}

[Johannes_B]

Welcome, you poste a link and clearly stated that this is a crosspost, so this is no problem at all.


What you see is a very important feature. It makes the entries really unique.

[julietbravo]

What you see is a very important feature. It makes the entries really unique.

But I thought that using the Harvard style this should be abbreviated to bla (2008a), bla (2008b)?

Multiple references to the same author
If you cite different documents by the same author which were published in the same year, to distinguish between them add the letters a, b, c, etc. in lower case after the year. Repeat in the reference list.
Example: ... (Williamson, 2001a), (Williamson, 2001b) etc. ...

http://www.kit.nl/health/wp-content/upl ... rd-Ref.pdf

[Johannes_B]

Harvard Referencing just means author date referencing.

You stated yourself in your question, that it works if the author is the same (no matter if one name or a matching list of names), so you need an extra letter to uniquely cite.

Consider the following: Basu, Gonzales, Jesus, Fernandez (2009) and Basu, Smith, Edinborough, Wright (2009)

Would you feel confident to replace this with Basu (2009a) and Basu (2009b)?

[julietbravo]

I don't see the difference? I mean, two different papers which both have the exact same list of authors are abbreviated to "Basu et al. (2008a), Basu et al. (2008b)", with the resulting references as (this is actually what Bibtex/AGSM creates):

Basu, S., Vinuesa, J.-F. & Swift, A. (2008a), ‘Dynamic LES modeling of a diurnal cycle’, J. Appl. Meteor. 47(4), 1156–1174.
Basu, S., Vinuesa, J.-F. & Swift, A. (2008b), ‘An inconvenient ”truth” about using sensible heat flux as a surface boundary condition in models under stably stratified regimes’, Acta Geop. 56(1), 88–99.

Then why not do the same thing for two publications which have different authors, like in my example? As long as the addition a/b is also present in the bibliography (like in the example above), the in-text references are uniquely labeled?

[julietbravo]

An answer was posted at http://tex.stackexchange.com/a/299029/91445, describing this behavior as "You've come across an unusual -- and admittedly rather severely under-documented -- feature (not a bug...)"

It seems that the apalike style does behave how I want the references to behave, so I'll start trying that.

[Johannes_B]

This is science/engineering ... when you don't know an answer but know the guy who might now the answer, you are golden.

I will add mico's answer tomorrow.

[julietbravo]

I was not sure if it was correct to copy/paste his answer here, but if that's okay, perfect.

[Johannes_B]

Mico posted an answer on TeX.SX:

You've come across an unusual -- and admittedly rather severely under-documented -- feature (not a bug...) of the `agsm` bibliography style. Suppose two bib items labelled, say, `AA` and `BB` each have one or more authors. Crucially, suppose the *total number* of authors differs -- e.g., let bibitem `AA` have 3 authors and bibitem `BB` have 5 authors -- and suppose further that `AA` and `BB` share the same first author (say, `XYZ`) *and* the same publication year (say, `2000`).

When this occurs -- as is the case in the example you've posted -- the `agsm` bibliography style does *not* set the citation call-outs as `XYZ et al (2000a)` and `XYZ et al. (2000b)`, respectively. Instead, it lists *all author names* for both publications.

I suppose this is a fail-safe way of avoiding any kind of confusion over whose publication might be cited as `XYZ et al. (2000a)`.

The only time when you do get the `FirstAuthor et al (year)` citation call-out pattern is if (a) the two publications have the same authors (and thus the same *number* of authors) as well as the same publication year *and* (b) there is no other three-or-more-author publication in the bibliography that features the same first author and publication year.

Again, this feature of the `agsm` style is both uncommon (to put it neutrally) and, unfortunately, quite obscure and under-documented. I wouldn't call it a bug, though. If you truly can't stand this feature, it's probably a good idea to start looking for an alternative bibliography style.

An MWE and screenshot:

Code: Select all

    \RequirePackage{filecontents}
    \begin{filecontents}{testagsm.bib}
    @article{1,
    author = "XYZ", title = "x", journal= "y", year = 2000}
    @article{2,
    author = "XYZ and B", title = "x", journal= "y", year = 2000}
    @article{3a,
    author = "XYZ and B and C", title = "x1", journal = "y", year = 2000}
    @article{3b,
    author = "XYZ and B and C", title = "x2", journal = "y", year = 2000}
    @article{4,
    author = "XYZ and BB and CC and DD", title = "x", journal= "y", year = 2000}
    @article{5,
    author = "XYZ and BBB and CCC and DDD and EEE", title = "x", journal= "y", year = 2000}
    @article{x1,
      author = "A and B and C", title = "D1", journal = "E1", 
      year = 3001, volume = 1, number = 2, pages = "3-4"}
    @article{x2,
      author = "A and B and C", title = "D2", journal = "E2", 
      year = 3001, volume = 5, number = 6, pages = "7-8"}
    \end{filecontents}
   
    \documentclass{article}
    \usepackage{natbib,har2nat}
    \bibliographystyle{agsm}
    \setlength\parindent{0pt} % just for this example
    
    \begin{document}
    \begingroup
    \obeylines
    \citet{1}
    \citet{2}
    \citet{3a}, \citet{3b}
    \citet{4}
    \citet{5}
    
    \medskip
    \citet{x1}, \citet{x2}
    \endgroup
    
    \bibliography{testagsm}
    \end{document}