[Tex/LaTex] Bibtex file does not compile

bibliographiesbibtex

I've been googling for hours and found many related issues but still don't understand what's gone wrong. i have run latex and bib at least 1000 times.
In the dropdown menu I use "pdflatex" for my latex file and "bibtex" for my bib file. I am using Texworks. Also, I should say this has worked previously on another computer.

here's my bib file:

@article{paper,
author={name},
title="{title}",
journal={J. Phys. Conf. Ser.},
volume={67},
number={},
 pages={23},
 year={2007}
}

and this is my latex file:

\documentclass[a4paper, 12pt]{article}


\begin{document}
\title{Autumn Term Report}
\author{myself}
\date{\today}
\maketitle

  HI
\cite{paper}

\bibliographystyle{unsrt}
\bibliography{trial.bib}
\end{document}

and here's my bbl file (empty! so i think bibtex musn't be compiling)

\begin{thebibliography}{}

\end{thebibliography}

Also, in my output pdf i get a "References" section but the article is not listed there, and there's a question mark where i refer to it in the main body.

Best Answer

You have to use \cite{paper} without @. Also, don't use the extension in \bibliography{trial}. Having said this, you have to run this compile sequence assuming that your main file is named myfile.tex

pdflatex myfile
bibtex myfile
pdflatex myfile
pdflatex myfile

Code (myfile.tex):

\documentclass[a4paper, 12pt]{article}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{trial.bib}
  @article{paper,
author={name},
title="{title}",
journal={J. Phys. Conf. Ser.},
volume={67},
number={},
 pages={23},
 year={2007}
 }
\end{filecontents*}

\begin{document}
\title{Autumn Term Report}
\author{myself}
\date{\today}
\maketitle

  HI
\cite{paper}

\bibliographystyle{unsrt}
\bibliography{trial}    %% no .bib needed
\end{document}

enter image description here

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Bibtex: unsrt and crossref

This is a well known design flaw of the BibTeX database format:

inproceedings entries have to provide both, the title field – which defines the title of the respective paper and the booktitle field, which gives the title of, well, the proceedings book.
When you crossref to another entry in BibTex, all fields that have not been set so far are taken from the referred entry. Hence, referring from inproceedings to proceedings imports all fields, but title, which has already been used for the paper title. Afterwards, BibTeX complaints if booktitle is (still) missing.
proceedings entries, however, need their title (like other books) to be given by the title field. It is taken if you refer directly to a proceedings book (like \cite{stackexchange/tex/23122}) or the style does it automatically (to shorten your inproceedings entries).

So the general (but ugly) recommendation (e.g., given by WikiPedia) to be able to use proceedings entries stand-alone as well as crossrefed by inproceedings entries is to state the title twice: once as title and once as booktitle.

Edit:

A less ugly solution to this problem is provided by switching from traditional BibTex to biblatex with the biber backend, as explained in the answer by lockstep.

[Tex/LaTex] Bibtex – Make Title italic, Rest Upright

Make a copy of alpha.bst and call it myalpha.bst. In myalpha.bst, search for

FUNCTION {format.title}
{ title empty$
    { "" }
    { title "t" change.case$ }
  if$
}

and replace it with

FUNCTION {format.title}
{ title empty$
    { "" }
    { title emphasize "t" change.case$ }  
  if$
}

_{Note that addition of emphasize.}

Now search for

FUNCTION {article}
{ output.bibitem
  format.authors "author" output.check
  new.block
  format.title "title" output.check
  new.block
  crossref missing$
    { journal emphasize "journal" output.check
      format.vol.num.pages output
      format.date "year" output.check
    }
    { format.article.crossref output.nonnull
      format.pages output
    }
  if$
  new.block
  note output
  fin.entry
}

and replace with

FUNCTION {article}
{ output.bibitem
  format.authors "author" output.check
  new.block
  format.title "title" output.check
  new.block
  crossref missing$
    { journal "journal" output.check
      format.vol.num.pages output
      format.date "year" output.check
    }
    { format.article.crossref output.nonnull
      format.pages output
    }
  if$
  new.block
  note output
  fin.entry
}

Here, emphasize is removed from the line: journal emphasize "journal" output.check to prevent journal title from becoming emphasized.

Don't forget to use \bibliographystyle{myalpha}.

Code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{Master.bib}
@book {Bre89,
    AUTHOR = {Bressoud, David M.},
     TITLE = {{Factorization and Primality Testing}},
    SERIES = {Undergraduate Texts in Mathematics},
 PUBLISHER = {Springer-Verlag},
   ADDRESS = {New York},
      YEAR = {1989},
}
@article {CEP83,
    AUTHOR = {Canfield, E. R. and Erd{\H{o}}s, Paul and Pomerance, Carl},
     TITLE = {On a problem of {O}ppenheim concerning ``factorisatio
              numerorum''},
   JOURNAL = {J. Number Theory},
  FJOURNAL = {Journal of Number Theory},
    VOLUME = {17},
      YEAR = {1983},
    NUMBER = {1},
     PAGES = {1--28},
}
\end{filecontents*}
\begin{document}
I cite ~\cite{Bre89}.
\nocite{*}
\bibliography{Master}
\bibliographystyle{myalpha}
\end{document}