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writing my research proposal, have trouble to define the reference section at the end of the my latex file, I export .bib file from JabRef, and the Latex upload the .bib file well, but when I run the Latex I don't see the Reference section at the end, however I haven't cited any reference in the passage. I have run the Latex several times haven'y seen the ref section yet. When I cite a ref in the passage, in the output pdf file it gives me the question mark.

This is how I call the *.bib file 

\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{Research Proposal}
Guido
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Mori
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    Are you really using the biblatex package? \bibliographystyle{<style>} is not a biblatex command. But, regardless, your problem sounds like you are not running the normal sequence of latex file.tex, bibtex file.aux, latex file.tex, latex file.tex (where 'file.tex' is the name of your actual .tex file). – jon Jun 30 '14 at 04:08
  • @jon - I don't think it's necessary -- or advisable -- to include ".aux" in the bibtex-ing instruction; bibtex file suffices. – Mico Jun 30 '14 at 04:54
  • Did you write \nocite{*}? This is the canonical way to make every item of the .bib file appear in the Reference section, even if it is not cited in the text. – Bernard Jun 30 '14 at 07:40
  • @Mico -- It is advisable at this stage: otherwise people may try things like bibtex bibliography.bib, which I've certainly seen before. It may not be necessary, but why not let people know which file is getting processed? – jon Jun 30 '14 at 11:30
  • @jon -- Just to be clear: I recommend writing bibtex file rather than bibtex file.aux. If there's a risk of confusion over which file(s) BibTeX operates on, it may be necessary to state explicitly that one must not run bibtex somefile.bib. – Mico Jun 30 '14 at 11:33
  • Hi guys, thanks for your comments, actually I'm using \usepackage[super,sort&compress,comma]{natbib}, so don't have problem with \bibliographystyle{ – Mori Jul 01 '14 at 02:43
  • This is the Log file message when I run BibTex:

    [ This is BibTex, The top-level auxiliary file: proposal.aux The style file plain.bst White space in argument--line 14 of plain Proposal.aux :\bibdata{Ref:Test} I'm skipping whatever remains of this command I found no database files--while reading file proposal.aux warning-- I didn't fid a database entry for "AbedonHymanThomas2003" (There were two error messages).]

     – Mori Jul 01 '14 at 02:54
  • When you run latex file.tex (or latex file -- it is clever enough to look for the file extension itself), it will, on a successful run, create file.aux, which is the 'target' file that BibTeX reads (via bibtex file.aux or bibtex file -- BibTeX, too, is clever). What happens, briefly, is that when LaTeX reads the command \cite{<bibkey>}, it writes in the .aux file that that citation was cited; BibTeX then writes information to a file ending .bbl, which LaTeX then uses to write the correct information to the outputted .dvi or .pdf. – jon Jul 01 '14 at 14:36

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