Summarised (and expanded) from comments above:
BibTeX uses the aux file written by LaTeX (showing where you want to cite what) together with a bst file (containing stylistic information - such as plain.bst) and a bib file (containing bibliographic information about any document you might want to reference). So a workflow from the command line might look like
latex
- to generate the aux file
bibtex
- to generate a bbl file which contains information about the specific references mentioned in the aux file, formatted correctly
latex
- to incorporate the information in the bbl file into your typeset document
- possibly
latex
again, to fix any cross-referencing problems introduced when all the citations were included
Looking at the aux and bbl files along the way - and, as @Joseph pointed out, the blg file which is BibTeX's log - can help to troubleshoot problems.
For completeness as an answer: on this occasion it apparently turned out that the bibtex
step wasn't working due to a typo in the name of the bst file.
This problem is due to biblatex-apa
's (apa.bbx
's) apaauthor
name format; you might want to notify the author of this small bug.
The string and others
in the author list sets ifmorenames
to true. apaauthor
checks for this case whenever a name is printed, not just at the very end of the list; consequently it prints the andothers
string ("et al.") after each name.
The fix is to add the following lines to your preamble.
\DeclareNameFormat{apaauthor}{%
\ifthenelse{\value{listcount}=\maxprtauth\AND\value{listcount}<\value{listtotal}}
{\addcomma\addspace\ldots\addspace}
{\ifthenelse{\value{listcount}>\maxprtauth\AND\value{listcount}<\value{listtotal}}
{}
{\ifthenelse{\iffieldequalstr{doubtfulauthor}{true}}
{\mkbibbrackets{\usebibmacro{name:apa:last-first}{#1}{#3}{#4}{#5}{#7}?}}
{\usebibmacro{name:apa:last-first}{#1}{#3}{#4}{#5}{#7}}}}%
\ifthenelse{\value{listcount}=\value{listtotal}}% this test is new
{\ifmorenames{\andothersdelim\bibstring{andothers}}{}}{}}
The MWE
\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@Article{boker2011,
Author = {Boker, S. and Neale, M. and Maes, H. and Wilde, M. and
Spiegel, M. and Brick, T. and Spies, J. and Estabrook,
R. and Kenny, S. and Bates, T. and others},
Title = {Open{M}x: {A}n open source extended structural
equation modeling framework},
Journal = {Psychometrika},
Volume = {76},
Number = {2},
Pages = {306--317},
year = 2011
}
\documentclass{apa6}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=apa,maxnames=999,sortcites=true,sorting=nyt,apabackref=true,backend=biber]{biblatex}
\DeclareLanguageMapping{american}{american-apa}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}
\DeclareNameFormat{apaauthor}{%
\ifthenelse{\value{listcount}=\maxprtauth\AND\value{listcount}<\value{listtotal}}
{\addcomma\addspace\ldots\addspace}
{\ifthenelse{\value{listcount}>\maxprtauth\AND\value{listcount}<\value{listtotal}}
{}
{\ifthenelse{\iffieldequalstr{doubtfulauthor}{true}}
{\mkbibbrackets{\usebibmacro{name:apa:last-first}{#1}{#3}{#4}{#5}{#7}?}}
{\usebibmacro{name:apa:last-first}{#1}{#3}{#4}{#5}{#7}}}}%
\ifthenelse{\value{listcount}=\value{listtotal}}
{\ifmorenames{\andothersdelim\bibstring{andothers}}{}}{}}
\shorttitle{IFA}
\begin{document}
OpenMx \parencite{boker2011,aksin,wilde,murray}
\printbibliography
\end{document}
then yields
Update 2013-10: This has been corrected in biblatex-apa
version 6.4 according to a comment below the question from user PLK.
Best Answer
in your document you make a reference to a label:
This label does not exist, hence the reported error.
While what you want is a reference to a bibliographic item:
so, do:
this sequence is for understanding how it works. When concentrating on writing a paper for instance, there's a lot of tools to automate this (try F1 in texmaker or command-T in texshop for instance)