[Tex/LaTex] Two papers that abbreviate to the same Author et al (1999) in text

author-numberbibtexnatbib

I have two citations like 

@ARTICLE{Openshaw1999a,
  author = {Openshaw, S. and Turton, I. and Macgill, J},
  title = {Using the Geographical Analysis Machine to Analyze Limiting Long-term
    Illness},
  journal = {Geographical and Environmental Modelling},
  year = {1999},
  volume = {3.1},
  pages = {83-99},
  owner = {ijt1},
  timestamp = {2010.09.27}
}

and 

@INCOLLECTION{citeulike:8468480,
  author = {Openshaw, Stan and Turton, Ian and Macgill, James and Davy, John},
  title = {{Putting the Geographical Analysis Machine on the Internet}},
  booktitle = {Innovations in GIS 6},
  publisher = {Taylor and Francis},
  year = {1999},
  editor = {Gittings, Bruce},
  chapter = {10},
  pages = {121--132},
  address = {London}}

which both appear in the text as “Openshaw et al (1999)” when I cite them. Other than using [fullnamesfirst] as an option to natbib is there a way to prevent them appearing to be citations of the same paper?

Best Answer

Citing the two papers as "Openshaw et al (1999a)" and "Openshaw et al (1999b)" implies that those papers were written by the same co-authors, while in fact one author (John Davy) was part of the second, but not of the first author team. (Herbert's use of the alpha style avoids this problem.) Using author-year-styles, I would cite the papers as "Openshaw, Turton et al (1999)" and "Openshaw, Turton, Macgill et al (1999)". I'm not aware of a bibliography style that will do so automatically (disambiguation of author lists is on the roadmap for future versions of biblatex). Using natbib, you could define

\defcitealias{key1}{Oppenshaw, Turton et al (1999)}
\defcitealias{key2}{Oppenshaw, Turton, Macgill et al (1999)}

and write

\citetalias{key1,key2}

in the text, but this solution is far from perfect (\citepalias would result in double parentheses).

UPDATE: Disambiguation of author names and name lists was implemented in biblatex v1.4, released on March 31st, 2011. See section 4.11.4 of the biblatex manual for details. Have a look at the following example with the package option uniquelist=true:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[style=authoryear,maxnames=1,uniquelist=true]{biblatex}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article{Openshaw1999a,
  author = {Openshaw, Stan and Turton, Ian and Macgill, James},
  title = {Using the Geographical Analysis Machine to Analyze Limiting Long-term Illness},
  journaltitle = {Geographical and Environmental Modelling},
  year = {1999},
  volume = {3.1},
  pages = {83-99},
  owner = {ijt1},
  timestamp = {2010.09.27},
}
@incollection{citeulike:8468480,
  author = {Openshaw, Stan and Turton, Ian and Macgill, James and Davy, John},
  title = {{Putting the Geographical Analysis Machine on the Internet}},
  booktitle = {Innovations in GIS 6},
  publisher = {Taylor and Francis},
  year = {1999},
  editor = {Gittings, Bruce},
  chapter = {10},
  pages = {121--132},
  location = {London},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\nocite{*}

\begin{document}

\printbibliography

\end{document}

enter image description here

For comparison see the output of the same example with uniquelist=false:

enter image description here

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