Auto-insert "Ref." word before citation

Question

I would like to ask if there is an easy way to auto-include a "Ref." word before any of my citations ie if I do

Have a look in \cite{pub1}

then to show up like

Have a look in Ref. [1]

I would suggest not redefining the (simple) \cite command: what if you later realize that you want to cite something without the "Ref." string? then you won't be able to! So I suggest creating a new command with the requested functionality and using that instead. — nplatis, Sep 16 '13 at 22:23

score 7 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 10 '20 at 12:32

If you are using biblatex you can put the following modification into your preamble.

\DeclareCiteCommand{\cite}[Ref.~\mkbibbrackets]
  {\usebibmacro{prenote}}
  {\usebibmacro{citeindex}%
   \usebibmacro{cite}}
  {\multicitedelim}
  {\usebibmacro{postnote}}

if you do not want to override the standard behaviour of \cite, go with

\DeclareCiteCommand{\refcite}[Ref.~\mkbibbrackets]
      {\usebibmacro{prenote}}
      {\usebibmacro{citeindex}%
       \usebibmacro{cite}}
      {\multicitedelim}
      {\usebibmacro{postnote}}

instead.

The full MWE

\documentclass[ngerman, a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage{xpatch}% to patch the editor macros
\usepackage[style=numeric, backend=biber]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\DeclareCiteCommand{\cite}[Ref.~\mkbibbrackets]
  {\usebibmacro{prenote}}
  {\usebibmacro{citeindex}%
   \usebibmacro{cite}}
  {\multicitedelim}
  {\usebibmacro{postnote}}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article{testart,
  author        = {Arnold Uthor and William Riter},
  title         = {A Very Interesting Article},
  journal       = {Journal of Articles},
  volume        = {7},
  number        = {3},
  pages         = {1-5},
  date          = {2010},
}
@book{testbook,
  author        = {Arnold Uthor},
  title         = {A Book},
  subtitle      = {Some Books Have Subtitles},
  date          = {2013},
  publisher     = {Peter Ublisher &amp; Co.},
  location      = {Place City},
}
\end{filecontents}
\begin{document}
  Let's cite \cite{testbook} and \cite{testart}.
  \nocite{*}
  \printbibliography
\end{document}

then yields enter image description here

Edit

As per @henrique's suggestion, we can also define a bibstring reference via

\NewBibliographyString{reference}
\DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{%
  reference = {ref\adddot},
}

and use that in our definition of \refcite

\newrobustcmd*{\Refcite}{\bibsentence\refcite}
\DeclareCiteCommand{\refcite}[\bibstring{reference}\addnbspace\mkbibbrackets]% or \addnbthinspace
  {\usebibmacro{prenote}}
  {\usebibmacro{citeindex}%
   \usebibmacro{cite}}
  {\multicitedelim}
  {\usebibmacro{postnote}}

One can now use \refcite and \Refcite just like all the other \cite/\Cite commands.

\documentclass[american, a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=numeric, backend=biber]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\NewBibliographyString{reference}
\DefineBibliographyStrings{english}{%
  reference = {ref\adddot},
}
\newrobustcmd*{\Refcite}{\bibsentence\refcite}
\DeclareCiteCommand{\refcite}[\bibstring{reference}\addnbspace\mkbibbrackets]% or \addnbthinspace
  {\usebibmacro{prenote}}
  {\usebibmacro{citeindex}%
   \usebibmacro{cite}}
  {\multicitedelim}
  {\usebibmacro{postnote}}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article{testart,
  author        = {Arnold Uthor and William Riter},
  title         = {A Very Interesting Article},
  journal       = {Journal of Articles},
  volume        = {7},
  pages         = {1-5},
  date          = {2010},
}
@book{testbook,
  author        = {Arnold Uthor},
  title         = {A Book},
  date          = {2013},
  publisher     = {Peter Ublisher &amp; Co.},
  location      = {Place City},
}
\end{filecontents}
\begin{document}
  Let's cite \refcite{testbook} and \refcite{testart}. \Refcite{testbook} and \refcite{testbook}.
  \nocite{*}
  \printbibliography
\end{document}

yields enter image description here

This might be overkill, but I'd add "Ref." as a bibstring in order to have language-specific citations (mostly for case-sensitive citation commands such as \cite and \Cite). — henrique, Sep 16 '13 at 18:42

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:34

Regardless of the reference package you're using, the following should work:

enter image description here

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{letltxmacro}% http://ctan.org/pkg/letltxmacro
\LetLtxMacro\oldcite\cite% Store \cite in \oldcite
\renewcommand*{\cite}{Ref.~\oldcite}% Prepend \cite with Ref.~
\begin{document}
See \cite{abc}.
\begin{thebibliography}{x}
  \bibitem{abc} Some reference
\end{thebibliography}
\end{document}

The approach is to firstly save \cite in some other macro via \LetLtxMacro and then prepend Ref.~ to it. Alternatively, xpatch can also be used to prepend <code> to robust commands using

\xpretocmd{\cite}{Ref.~}{}{}% \xpretocmd{<cmd>}{<code>}{<success>}{<failure>}

Auto-insert "Ref." word before citation

2 Answers2

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