[Tex/LaTex] Something’s wrong–perhaps a missing \item

bibtex

I have created a separate file for references, called references.bib and I want to call it in my tex file with the following syntax

\documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran}
\begin{document}
\section{Related Works}
   The work \cite{Zhnag05}...
\bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
\bibliography{references}
\end{document}

The bib file contains

@IEEEtranBSTCTL{IEEEexample:BSTcontrol,
CTLdash_repeated_names = "no",
}

@article{Zhang05,
  author = "Author1 and Author2",
  title = "{The title}",
  booktitle = {ACM},
  year = {2005},
  volume = {3},
  issue = {2},
  pages = {363-387},
}

However I get this error during the compilation

(./bare_conf.bbl
! LaTeX Error: Something's wrong--perhaps a missing \item.

The .bbl file contains

% Generated by IEEEtran.bst, version: 1.13 (2008/09/30)
\begin{thebibliography}{}
\providecommand{\url}[1]{#1}
\csname url@samestyle\endcsname
\providecommand{\newblock}{\relax}
\providecommand{\bibinfo}[2]{#2}
\providecommand{\BIBentrySTDinterwordspacing}{\spaceskip=0pt\relax}
\providecommand{\BIBentryALTinterwordstretchfactor}{4}
\providecommand{\BIBentryALTinterwordspacing}{\spaceskip=\fontdimen2\font plus
\BIBentryALTinterwordstretchfactor\fontdimen3\font minus
  \fontdimen4\font\relax}
\providecommand{\BIBforeignlanguage}[2]{{%
\expandafter\ifx\csname l@#1\endcsname\relax
\typeout{** WARNING: IEEEtran.bst: No hyphenation pattern has been}%
\typeout{** loaded for the language `#1'. Using the pattern for}%
\typeout{** the default language instead.}%
\else
\language=\csname l@#1\endcsname
\fi
#2}}
\providecommand{\BIBdecl}{\relax}
\BIBdecl
\end{thebibliography}

There is a similar question here, but it didn't solve my problem.

Any way to fix that?

Best Answer

You are refering with a wrong bibtex key. It is \cite{Zhang05} not \cite{Zhnag05}

\documentclass[conference]{IEEEtran}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{references.bib}
 @IEEEtranBSTCTL{IEEEexample:BSTcontrol,
CTLdash_repeated_names = "no",
}

@article{Zhang05,
  author = "Author1 and Author2",
  title = "{The title}",
  booktitle = {ACM},
  year = {2005},
  volume = {3},
  issue = {2},
  pages = {363-387},
}
\end{filecontents*}
\begin{document}
\section{Related Works}
   The work \cite{Zhang05}...
\bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
\bibliography{references}
\end{document}

enter image description here

BTW, for entries of type @article, you should use the field journal instead of booktitle to store the string "ACM".

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