[Tex/LaTex] Bibtex “Author with contributions” wrong sorting

bibliographiesbibtex

See this bibtex entry (gotten directly from R using citation()):

@Manual{demography,
  title = {demography: Forecasting mortality, fertility, migration and population data},
  author = {Rob J Hyndman with contributions from Heather Booth and Leonie Tickle and John Maindonald and Simon Wood and R Core Team.},
  year = {2012},
  note = {R package version 1.14},
  url = {http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=demography},
}

Since the main author is Rob J Hyndman, I'd expect bibtex together with \bibliographystyle{plain} to put this reference as H, ie. between G and I. Now, it's somewhere in the middle of Ws, which doesn't look right.

It gets print as:

Rob J Hyndman with contributions from Heather Booth, Leonie Tickle, John Maindonald,
Simon Wood, and R Core Team. demography: Forecasting mortality, fertility, migration
and population data, 2012. R package version 1.14.

How do I get it to print in the "right" place?

Best Answer

Preface: Even though the locution "with contributions from" is used in the reference on R's website, you shouldn't feel compelled to use it for a bib entry in your document. Using the simple and connector between the first and subsequent authors is perfectly legitimate in the present case -- and doing so avoids all kinds of tricky complications.

However, if you really, truly, absolutely prefer to provide the string "with contributions from" in the bibliography (while, of course, still keeping the entry sorted under H for Hyndman!), you can do so with the following, admittedly somewhat kludgy method: Use both the and connector and the string {\relax with contributions from}, as in the following entry:

@manual{demography,
  title =  {demography: {Forecasting} mortality, fertility, migration and population data},
  author = {Rob J. Hyndman and {\relax with contributions from} 
            Heather Booth and Leonie Tickle and John Maindonald and Simon Wood and {R Core Team}},
  year =   {2012},
  note =   {R package version 1.14},
  url =    {http://CRAN.R-project.org/package=demography},
}

Observe that I'd make two further changes to the bib entry. First, I'dencase the final author (R Core Team) in curly braces to inform BibTeX that it's a "corporate" author -- for which no parts should be abbreviated (say, as "R.C. Team"...) even if the bibliography style in use is set to abbreviate first and middle names down to their first initials. Second, I'd encase the word Forecasting in the title field in curly braces; doing so prevents the F from being converted to f if "sentence- style" typesetting of entries of title fields is practiced by the bibliography style you use.

Assuming this entry is contained in a file named hyndman.bib, the following MWE, which uses the plainnat bibliography style, 

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[round]{natbib} % use author-year citation style
\usepackage[colorlinks=true,allcolors=blue]{hyperref} % simplify color scheme ...
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\begin{document}
\noindent
\citet{demography}
\bibliography{hyndman}
\end{document}

generates this output:

enter image description here

A caveat: This method won't work perfectly if you use a bibliography style (such as chicago) that abbreviates first and middle names down to their initials. For instance, if you used the bibliography style chicago, you'd get Hyndman, R. J., with contributions from Heather Booth, L. Tickle, ...; note that Ms. Booth's first name wouldn't be truncated. I guess you could fix this minor issue by entering her name as "H. Booth".

Postscript: Once the additional keyword and has been inserted after the first author's name, why bother encasing the string with contributions from in a {\relax ...} construct? The \relax directive "hides" the rest of the stuff in curly braces from BibTeX (though not from LaTeX). This is useful just in case you have two entries, one with a name field such as "Rob J. Hyndman and {\relax with contributions from} Heather Booth and Leonie Tickle" and another with a name field such as "Rob J. Hyndman and Homer Buster and Leonard Trinket" (i.e., with Messrs Buster and Trinket being listed as "full-fledged" authors). If you didn't hide the "with contributions from" string from BibTeX, the former entry would be listed after the latter, even though "Heather Booth" would normally be considered to come before "Homer Buster"...

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