bibtexnatbib
I've been having the same problem as this person. My citations show up as [#], and not in the desired format (Author, Year).
I have checked natbib as advised:
, and also in the citation menu itself:
However, the PDF prints still only give me [#]. Any ideas?
Edit: My BibTex is an export file from Mendeley, and looks quite normal.
Thank you so much in advance.
With etoolbox you can patch the command natbib uses to set all non-numeric citation labels: \NAT@citex. The postnote is passed to \NAT@citex as the second argument (#2). For \citet and its variants \ifNAT@swa will expand <false>, \ifNAT@par expands <true> and \NAT@date is defined.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{natbib}
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\NAT@citex}
{\ifNAT@swa\else\if*#2*\else\NAT@cmt#2\fi
\if\relax\NAT@date\relax\else\NAT@@close\fi\fi}
{\ifNAT@swa\else\if*#2*\else\ifNAT@par\else\NAT@cmt#2\fi\fi
\if\relax\NAT@date\relax\else\NAT@@close%
\if*#2*\else\ifNAT@par\NAT@cmt#2\fi\fi\fi\fi}{}{}
\makeatother
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@Book{companion,
author = {Goossens, Michel and Mittelbach, Frank and Samarin, Alexander},
title = {The LaTeX Companion},
edition = {1},
publisher = {Addison-Wesley},
location = {Reading, Mass.},
year = {1994}}
@Book{adams,
title = {The Restaurant at the End of the Universe},
author = {Douglas Adams},
series = {The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy},
publisher = {Pan Macmillan},
year = {1980}}
\end{filecontents}
\newcommand{\cmd}[1]{\textbackslash\texttt{#1}}
\begin{document}
\noindent
\cmd{citet}: \citet[e.g.][100]{adams}, \citet[pp. 1--10]{companion,adams} \\
\cmd{Citet}: \Citet[pp. 1--10]{adams}, \Citet[pp. 1--10]{companion} \\
\cmd{citet*}: \citet*[pp. 1--10]{companion,adams} \\
\cmd{Citet*}: \Citet*[p. 10]{companion} \\
\cmd{cite}: \cite[e.g.][100]{adams}, \cite{companion} \\
\cmd{citep}: \citep[e.g.][p. 20]{adams}, \citep[1--10]{companion,adams} \\
\cmd{citetext}, \cmd{citealp}:
\citetext{see \citealp{companion}, or even better \citealp{adams}} \\
\cmd{citeauthor}: \citeauthor{adams}, \citeauthor{companion} \\
\cmd{citeyear}: \citeyear{adams}, \citeyear{companion} \\
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\bibliography{\jobname}
\end{document}
Your question is quite unclear to me. Are you forced to use the document class and the bst you used in your MWE? For example, for publishing an article? Then do not change the predefined behaviour of the template you use!
If you are not forced to use the class and bibliography style, why do you not just use another one? It is much easier to customize biblatex than to create an own style with makebst.
The specific reason for the parenthes-related issues you're encountering is that you're using a bibliography style which requires a year field if the entry is of type @article. (Separately, there's also an issue with missing journal fields; more about that later.) That's why you get an empty () pair when you omit the year field. Because the style is not designed not to have a year field for entries of type @article, no test is performed to check if the field is missing. So the "error" you get is more a feature than a bug, because you're using the entry type in a way it is not built for.
Your MWE generates several warnings you should read and correct. For example, you need to add a class option for the society and journal.
You also provide the file extensions .bst for the style (don't!) and .bib for the bib file (don't!) in the arguments of \bibliographystyle and \bibliography. Finally, if you want to get rid of warnings about the missing field journal, you have to add something like journal = {MISSING}, (change MISSING to what you need) to each of your bib entries.
Please see the following MWE. I've added class options, augmented the entries with year and journal fields, and corrected the syntax of the \bibliographystyle and \bibliography directives.
\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@article{disney2013,
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
arxivId = {1307.9998},
author = {Donald Duck and Dagobert Duck and Daisy Duck and Mickey Mouse},
eprint = {1307.9998},
journal = {MISSING},
url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.9998},
year = {2001},
}
@article{disney2015,
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
arxivId = {1411.9999},
eprint = {1411.9999},
author = {Donald Duck and Pippi Longstockings and Goofy Goof},
journal = {MISSING},
url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.9999},
year = {2002},
}
@article{disney2017,
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
arxivId = {1411.9997},
eprint = {1411.9997},
author = {Mickey Mouse},
url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.9997},
journal = {MISSING},
year = {2003},
}
\end{filecontents*}
\documentclass[%
superscriptaddress,twocolumn,
10pt,
pra, aps % society=aps, journal=pra
]{revtex4-1}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\begin{document}
\cite{disney2015}
\cite{disney2013}
\cite{disney2017}
\bibliographystyle{apsrev4-1} % no .bst
\bibliography{\jobname} % no .bib
\end{document}
If you insist in not writing an year into the bib file (Why btw?) you have to copy the used style file and change it or better to use biblatex and the possibilities to customize it ...
As @Mico mentioned in his comment I add his advice here:
Instead of back-filling the missing journal and year fields for entries of type @article, which sort of treats the symptoms of the problem, why not treat the cause of the problem directly? My recommendation would be not to use the entry type @article for arxiv publications. Instead, I'd use the entry type @misc, which doesn't require the year field to begin with (or the journal field, for that matter).
Best Answer
At least for the class "elsarticle" (Elsevier), the document class is loaded with a numbered citation style by default. For elsarticle, one adds the year by adding the "authoryear" option to the class by doing this in LyX: Document -> Settings -> Document Class -> Class options -> Custom: "authoryear"
Source: elsarticle documentation