Hanging references using \fullcite

Question

I need APA style hanging references using \fullcite. For example

I need \fullcite because I want the reference cited where I want in the document, unlike at the end of the document using \cite.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

Update

The latest version of biblatex-apa (2.6 or above) now fixes this problem, so you should update rather than use the solution below. biblatex-apa now provides two commands: \fullcite which makes an inline reference (with no hanging indent) and \fullcitebib which makes a fake bibliography entry, with a hanging indent.

If you are making a categorised bibliography for a CV, for example, there are better ways to achieve this than using multiple \fullcitebib commands. See e.g.

• biblatex: List of publications in the CV

Original answer

The problem is that the standard \fullcite command in biblatex assumes that the full citation should be included in the text. So what's needed is to redefine the \fullcite command so that it actually makes a small bibliography when called. Here is the code:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=apa]{biblatex}
\DeclareLanguageMapping{american}{american-apa}
\bibliography{biblatex-examples}
\DeclareCiteCommand{\fullcite}
      {\renewcommand{\finalnamedelim}
           {\ifnum\value{liststop}>2 \finalandcomma\fi\addspace\&\space}
       \begin{thebibliography}\thebibitem}
      {\usedriver
         {\DeclareNameAlias{sortname}{default}}
      {\thefield{entrytype}}\finentry}
      {\thebibitem}
      {\end{thebibliography}}

\begin{document}

\fullcite{reese} % This citation will appear in the text

%\printbibliography % if you also have a bibliography

\end{document}

This should now do what you want.

For multiple citations, the citations aren't sorted automatically, but appear in the order in the fullcite command. This is because the apa style sets sortcites=false; to get the \fullcites to be sorted you can add sortcites=true to your biblatex options, but I suspect this will make other citations not fully APA compatible.

I should mention that the \fullcite command is not really appropriate for making larger lists of references; biblatex has other ways to make partial bibliographies.