[Tex/LaTex] order of appearance of authors in bibliographic entries

bibliographies

Im trying to have the bibliography defined for my document using BibTeX and the natbib citation management package. Styles such as unsrtnat give me the references in order of appearance in text. However, I have a problem that I cannot get around. Basically if a reference is supposed to look like:

Tyson J.P. Dikstra M. Holmes F.M.R. Theoretical Analysis on Effect of
Anomalous Low Friction. International journal of Placticity,
34(3-4):413, 1997.

after typesetting it appears as :

Dikstra M. Holmes F.M.R. Tyson J.P. Theoretical Analysis on Effect of
Anomalous Low Friction. International journal of Placticity,
34(3-4):413, 1997.

In other words, it puts the first author in the last place. Is there any method of getting around this?

The entry as it appears in the .bib file (refs.bib) is:

@ARTICLE{Tyson1997,
author={Tyson, J.P., Dikstra, M., Holmes, F.M.R.},
title={Theoretical Analysis on Effect of Anomalous Low Friction.},
journal={International journal of Plasticity},
year={1997},
volume={34},
number={3-4},
pages={413},
document_type={Article}
}

An excerpt from the tex file:

\usepackage[round,comma]{natbib}
\begin{document}

As an alternative method of analysis, \citet{Tyson1997} ...

\bibliographystyle{unsrtnat} 
\bibliography{refs}

\end{document}

Best Answer

You are probably using a bad syntax for the author names:

author={Tyson, J. P. and Dikstra, M. and Holmes, F. M. R.},

is the correct input so that BibTeX can parse the list of authors. I get the same output as you obtain with

author={Tyson J.P., Dikstra M. and Holmes F.M.R.},

that BibTeX parses, according to its rules, as two authors: the first has a family name "Tyson J.P.", first name "Dikstra" and middle name "M.". The second author has first name "Holmes" and family name "F.M.R.".

With your input

author={Tyson, J.P., Dikstra, M., Holmes, F.M.R.},

things are worse, because BibTeX finds too many commas and issues nine error messages.

Authors should be listed separated by the keyword and; you have the choice of listing each author as

<first name> <middle name(s)> <family name>

or in the clearer way

<family name>, <first name> <middle name(s)>

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Bibliography Style – Order of Appearance

As Seamus has said, there are a lot of styles that cover more or less all of this. I'd probably start with the biblatex style numeric-comp, which seems to cover what you want. Perhaps you might try that and then ask specific questions on aspects of the formatting which you wish to adjust.

To get you started, a simple example using a couple of references from my own database:

\begin{filecontents}{example.bib}
@ARTICLE{Rauchfuss2008,
  author = {Barton, Bryan E. and Olsen, Matthew T. and Rauchfuss, Thomas B.},
  title = {Aza- and Oxadithiolates Are Probable Proton Relays in Functional
    Models for the [FeFe]-Hydrogenases},
  journaltitle = {J. Am. Chem. Soc.},
  year = {2008},
  volume = {130},
  pages = {16834-16835},
  number = {50},
  doi = {10.1021/ja8057666},
}

@BOOK{Clegg1998,
  title = {Crystal Structure Determination},
  publisher = {Oxford University Press},
  year = {1998},
  author = {Clegg, William},
  isbn = {978-0-19-855901-6},
  location = {Oxford, U.K.},
}    
\end{filecontents}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[style=numeric-comp]{biblatex}
\bibliography{example}
\begin{document}
\nocite{*}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

The filecontents stuff here is simply to generate a .bib file, and I've used \nocite{*} to include all references rather than selected citations.

[Tex/LaTex] Elsevier, sort bibliographic entries alphabetically by surnames of authors

(Edited to incorporate information received via comments after I posted an initial answer.)

According to the final link you provided in the comments, the bibliographic entries must not only be sorted alphabetically by authors' surnames, but they must also be formatted according to APA-6 guidelines. Moreover, the citation call-outs must use authoryear style rather than, say, some numeric style.

The Elsevier template you've linked to provides eight [8!] candidate bibliography styles, but only three of them do not contain num in their filenames. This leaves three candidate bibliography styles: model2-names, model4-names, and model5-names. (Annoyingly, Elsevier doesn't seem to provide a list of what the various bib style files do.) Testing them one after the other reveals that you should be using model5-names.

Aside: I couldn't help but notice that both of the sample bib entries contain syntax and content errors. I realize you copied these entries from a template file, so it's moderately disturbing that Elsevier would distribute such faulty sample bib entries. E.g., there is a non-ASCII character in the number field of the "Dirac" entry, Lorentz should be encased in curly braces to keep it from being lower-cased, and spaces should be inserted between first and middle name initials of all authors. (Otherwise, only the first initial is printed; that's probably not what's called for.) Also, it's a really bad idea to combine the surname and "junior" components of an author's full name. In the code below, I've tried to fix some of these errors.

\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{mybibfile.bib}
@article{Feynman1963118,
  title   = "The theory of a general quantum system 
             interacting with a linear dissipative system",
  journal = "Annals of Physics",
  volume  = "24",
  pages   = "118--173",
  year    = "1963",
  doi     = "10.1016/0003-4916(63)90068-X",
  author  = "R. P. Feynman and Vernon, Jr., F. L.",
}
@article{Dirac1953888,
  title   = "The {Lorentz} transformation and absolute 
             time",
  journal = "Physica",
  volume  = "19",
  number  = "1--12",
  pages   = "888--896",
  year    = "1953",
  doi     = "10.1016/S0031-8914(53)80099-6",
  author  = "P. A. M. Dirac",
}
\end{filecontents}

\documentclass[3p,times,twocolumn,authoryear]{elsarticle}
\bibliographystyle{model5-names}
\usepackage{ecrc} % required by journal
\usepackage[spaces,hyphens,obeyspaces]{url}
\usepackage[colorlinks,allcolors=blue]{hyperref}

\begin{document}
\section{First section}
\citep{Feynman1963118,Dirac1953888}
\bibliography{mybibfile}
\end{document}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Bibliography Style – Order of Appearance

[Tex/LaTex] Elsevier, sort bibliographic entries alphabetically by surnames of authors

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