BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ Random references appearing in the bibliography

[4tn82bnME]

From time to time, authors submit papers to our academic journals and errant references appear at the end of the intended reference list. For example, an author may have a bib file with the correct # of references but somewhere along the way they must be pulling in extraneous references from another source - NOT uploaded as one of their submission files - so that when they compile the pdf, a multitude of odd references appear at the end and they can't find the source.

Is this due to a command error pulling in a file with the same name on their computer or an extra command not needed or ? I know a workaround is to paste the bib into the latex file but hoping to help my authors figure out why this happens.

[Ijon Tichy]

You can add every kind of text files (and bib files are text files) into a TeX file using filecontents environment. The environment is a kernel feature of LaTeX and works without extra package. See a good introduction to LaTeX for more information. Since LaTeX 2019-10-01 it also provides optional overwriting of existing files. See ltnews30 for more information.

[4tn82bnME]

Thanks very much! I'll try to put this into "author help language" - much appreciated!