I am using the package natbib
and the following jf.bst-file for the citation in my thesis http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/stanton/texintro/. According to the citation requirements the citation has to print out all the last names of the author when the number of authors are less than four. The problem now is, as sson as I have more than two authors I get for instance "Doyle et al. (2006)" whereas the output is supposed to be "Doyle, Lundholm and Soliman (2006)". According to the natbib reference sheet http://merkel.zoneo.net/Latex/natbib.php I can get my desired output by using \citet*
. This actually is tedious as I have to check every time the number of authors before deciding which cite-command to use. Is there a way to automatically make Late understands that with the normal \cite
command I can get the output mentionend above?
[Tex/LaTex] Citation “et al.” only for four and more authors with natbib and jf.bst
author-numbernatbib
Best Answer
To change the truncation criterion for using "et al." in a citation callout, from a piece having three or more authors to it having four or more authors, it is necessary to modify the function
format.lab.names
in the bibliography style file.I suggest you do the following:
Make a copy of the version of
jf.bst
you've been working with so far. Name the copy, say,jf3.bst
-- "3" to indicate non-truncation if a piece has exactly three authors. (Don't modifyjf.bst
directly.)Open the file
jf3.bst
in a text editor and find the functionformat.lab.names
. It should start around line 1160 and span 18 lines.Delete the entire function (i.e., all 18 lines) and insert the following chunk of code (46 lines total) in its place:
Save the file
jf3.bst
either in the directory where your main tex file is located or in a directory that's searched by BibTeX. If you choose the second option, be sure to update the filename database of your TeX distribution.Start using the new bibliography style by using the instruction
\bibliographystyle{jf3}
instead of\bibliographystyle{jf}
. After you first switch bibliography styles, be sure to run LaTeX, BibTeX, and LaTeX twice more to fully propagate all changes.Happy BibTeXing!
Addendum: Here are the citation callouts produced with
\citet
running the MWE below, first thejf
and then withjf3
. (One entry has three authors and the other has four.)With
jf
, both citation callouts truncate toAndersen et al.
:With
jf3
, only one citaton callout -- for the piece with four authors -- is truncated: