[Tex/LaTex] Bibtex ordering by appearence of the .bib file instead of the .tex file

bibtexsorting

I'm using TexMaker + BibTex + XeLaTeX and everything was fine, until I noticed that it was ordering the references by the .bib file order instead of the .tex file order. So it starts at [5] instead of [1] because my first citation it's the 5th element in the bib file.

This are the packages which I'm using:

\usepackage{graphicx} % images
\usepackage{fontspec} %font to show accents in xelatex
\usepackage{url} %for urls
\usepackage[portuguese]{babel} %portuguese documment
\usepackage{color} %for text color

I put the references before the end document:

\bibliographystyle{IEEEtran} %for IEEE references style
\bibliography{references}
\end{document}

Also I always do the F1–F11–F1–F1 to compile.

Best Answer

When a \nocite{*} appears in the document, all entries in the .bib database are automatically inserted in the bibliography, with the same order as specified by the chosen bibliography style, in the case of IEEEtran it's "unsorted".

Find the offending command and remove it, or place it at the end, where it won't influence the "unsorted" order of explicit citations. Of course, using \nocite{*} in such a document requires organizing the .bib file in some sensible order, so I'd recommend not using it. If you want to have some entry in the bibliography that wasn't cited in the document, use

\nocite{<key1>,<key2>,...}

just before the \bibliography{command}, where the keys are ordered as you wish.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] LaTeX/BibTex not arranging citations by order of appearance

This problem crops up all the time when you have citations in your captions, or probably less commonly in document division titles. By default, LaTeX uses the citations in the List of Figures, List of Tables, or Table of Contents as the "first" citation, since it occurs before the main body text.

Options to fix this include:

Adding the notoccite package to your preamble.
The \ignorecitefornumbering command as shown in Get BibTeX to ignore citation numbering in a figure caption does largely the same thing as notoccite.
Modifying the offending captions to have the form \caption[Caption without citation that appears in the List of Figures or Tables]{Caption with citation that appears with the figure or table itself}

If it were up to me, I'd go with option 1. Some editors or thesis committees may be happier with option 2. Example of option 1 (including natbib for \citeauthor command) follows:

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[numbers]{natbib}
\usepackage{notoccite}
% If you have \cite commands in \section-like commands, or in \caption, the
% citation will also appear in the table of contents, or list of whatever.
% If you are also using an unsrt-like bibliography style, these citations
% will come at the very start of the bibliography, which is confusing. This
% package suppresses the effect.

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@misc{foo,
 author = {Foo},
 title = {Title of Foo},
}
@misc{bar,
 author = {Bar},
 title = {Title of Bar},
}
@misc{baz,
 author = {Baz},
 title = {Title of Baz},
}
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}
\listoffigures

%\chapter{Introduction}
\section{The Beginning}
Here we cite \citeauthor{foo} \cite{foo}.
Now we cite \citeauthor{bar} \cite{bar}.
Finally, we cite \citeauthor{baz} \cite{baz}.
\begin{figure}[htbp]
\centering
\framebox[0.5\textwidth]{Here's a figure.}
\caption{Figure from \cite{bar}, which should most definitely \textbf{not}
         be numbered [1] in the LoF}
\end{figure}
\bibliographystyle{unsrtnat}
\bibliography{\jobname}
\end{document}

[Tex/LaTex] Reference sorting within the .bst file

Sorting of the references is indeed controlled by the bst file. This is not something that you should be changing separately: Choose a bst file that is suited for (presumably) numeric citation style, and it will almost certainly sort by order of citation. (If you're using the name-year citation style, you should be sorting your references alphabetically as well). If you otherwise like the looks of the style you have, identify it here and ask about look-alikes.

PS. bst files are written in a strange stack language that I recommend you don't bother with. Unless you have a very strange style, you'll find the sort command about 30 lines from the bottom of the file. It looks like this:

SORT

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] LaTeX/BibTex not arranging citations by order of appearance

[Tex/LaTex] Reference sorting within the .bst file

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