[Tex/LaTex] Citations not showing up in text and bibliography

bibliographies

I have a References.bib file that contains all references I will cite. My Paper.tex looks like this:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{makeidx}  % allows for indexgeneration
\usepackage{ifpdf}
\usepackage{url}
\usepackage{graphicx} 

\begin{document}

\begin{figure}[h]
   \centering
   \includegraphics[scale=.89,bb=0 0 291 279]{f1.png}
   \caption{Some description about the picture}
   \label{picture-label}
\end{figure}
TEXT \cite{1}

\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{References.bib}
\end{document}

But I did not get the References at the end of the PDF file, and also I did not get the citation after the text. instead I get [?]. How can I make my references show up in the text?

Best Answer

First of all, you have to remove the extension .bib from your \bibliography command; i.e. \bibliography{References} and make sure it is in the same folder as your compiles .tex file, if it is in a sub-directory then use \bibliography{./References/References} as an example.

You also have to make sure the entry is correct in your bibliography .bib file, I can see you use cite{1}, so I presume you have an entry in your .bib file as:

@book{1,
title={Book},
author={Author}
}

... of course you have to fill in all obligatory fields depending on entry type. BibTeX Documentation.

For your compilation to work properly, you should compile in the following manner:

pdflatex file.tex && bibtex file.aux && pdflatex file.tex && pdflatex file.tex

This example being given for a pdflatex output, you could use latex ,xetex or whichever engine you use.

If you get a [?] in your citation instead of a proper reference number, check the log file for something like: 

LaTeX Warning: Citation `1' on page 2 undefined on input line 51`