Reference list not uniformly displayed

Question

As I have asked earlier and yet not resolved the problem, I noticed that on my reference list, those reference with brackets around the year do not have pp on the page numbers, while those without brackets surrounding the year are the ones that have pp for the page numbers. I am using the following bst files: elsarticle-num.bst, elsarticle-harv.bst and elsarticle-num-names.bst. However, the problem persists even with other standard bst files such as apa.bst. Now each reference on the list looks like either of the following and are not uniformly displayed:

[5] blah blah blah, (2012) 15-23,.

[6] blah blah blah, 2012 pp.15-23

See code below:

\documentclass[preprint,12pt]{elsarticle}
\usepackage[english, spanish]{babel}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{mathabx}
\usepackage[]{natbib}

\begin{document}
.
.
.
\section*{References}
\bibliography{C:/Users/HP/Macpee_Document/bibliography_data/RefDatabase}
\bibliographystyle{elsarticle-num}

\end{document}

I use bibtex with Xetex. How can I resolve this? See output attached:

Sorry for the delay in replying to your answer. Here is a part of the database I have used for the reference. Ok see code:

@Conference{Atanasiu2000,
 Title                    = {Arithmetic with membranes},
 Author                   = {A. Atanasiu},
 Booktitle                = {Pre-proc. In Workshop on Multiset Processing, Curtea de Arges, Romania},
 Year                     = {2000},
 Pages                    = {1-17},
 Volume                   = {140},
 Owner                    = {HP},
 Timestamp                = {2015.05.10}
}
@Article{Chen2014,
 Title                    = {Automatic design of a P system for basic arithmetic operations},
 Author                   = {Y. Chen and G. Zhang and T. Wang and X. Huang},
 Journal                  = {Chinese Journal of Electronics},
 Year                     = {2014},
 Number                   = {2},
 Pages                    = {302-304},
 Volume                   = {23},
 Owner                    = {HP},
 Timestamp                = {2015.05.10}
}
@Article{Guo2013a,
 Title                    = {Fraction arithmetic operations performed by    P systems},
 Author                   = {Guo, Ping and Zhang, Hong and Chen, HZ and Chen, JX},
 Journal                  = {Chinese Journal of Electronics},
 Year                     = {2013},
 Number                   = {4},
 Pages                    = {689-694},
 Volume                   = {22}
}
@Article{Zeng2012,
 Title                    = {Performing four basic arithmetic operations with spiking neural P systems},
 Author                   = {Zeng, Xiangxiang and Song, Tao and Zhang, Xingyi and Pan, Linqiang},
 Journal                  = {NanoBioscience, IEEE Transactions on},
 Year                     = {2012},
 Number                   = {4},
 Pages                    = {366-374},
 Volume                   = {11},
 Publisher                = {IEEE}
}
@Conference{Guo2008,
 Title                    = {Arithmetic Operation in membrane system},
 Author                   = {P. Guo and J. Chen},
 Booktitle                = {proceedings of the 2008 international conference on BioMedical Engineering and informatics},
 Year                     = {2008},
 Pages                    = {13-39},
 Owner                    = {HP},
 Timestamp                = {2015.05.10}
}

Articles, books, webpages etc. are all laid out differently in a bibliography. Bu we don't know your database. Can you share at least a part with us to reproduce the issue? — Johannes_B, May 10 '16 at 04:58
Related: My bibliography list uses brackets on some reference years and without brackets on others as well as bibliography list uses pp. on some references and without pp. on others — Johannes_B, May 10 '16 at 04:59
This all looks 'by design' to me, but as noted without your .bib file (or an extract therefrom) we can't test and check there is not some other issue. — Joseph Wright, May 10 '16 at 07:05
The two conference entries are the one with a different format. — Johannes_B, May 10 '16 at 07:10
I did not draft the database myself. I used the online google scholar "https://scholar.google.com/" to generate the bibtex for each of the book or article I have studied for a fast job. I did not know it would also result in a bad job. — macpee, May 10 '16 at 07:21
Does it mean that it normal to have pp. for conferences and not for articles or books? But I rarely see it in the references of the other papers that I read. I may require the use of certain packages. — macpee, May 10 '16 at 07:36
@macpee: In general, I think you should rather reformulate and refine (through editing) your initial question since it appears related to the same issue (the three of them have been posted within 24h), instead of posting a new one each time (cf. Johannes' posted links). For more info, you can have a look at our starter guide and take a tour to familiarize yourself further with our format. — ebosi, May 10 '16 at 07:37
Thank you for that information @ebo. But I would rather delete the first two questions. I did not discover they were related when I posted the first two. — macpee, May 10 '16 at 07:40
@macpee Don't worry: we all started at the beginning and are learning by doing (: Anyway, you're here at the right place (and it's a nice one) to get answers to your question! — ebosi, May 10 '16 at 07:46
Thank you all but I cannot leave it as it is because none of elsevier's articles have references looking like that (conference looking different in format from articles and so on). — macpee, May 10 '16 at 08:00

Mico · Answer 1 · 2016-05-10T08:09:04.377

The two entries whose year fields are typeset without surrounding parentheses are of type @conference. In contrast, the three entries whose year fields are typeset with surrounding parentheses are of type @article. This difference appears to be a deliberate design choice. I certainly wouldn't spend time on modifying the bibliography style file to get rid of the difference.

Instead, I would spend time on ensuring that the contents of all fields are correct and that no words in the title fields will get lowercased inappropriately. For example, the "P" in "P systems" should not be lowercased, right? Moreover, the @conference entry type may be suboptimal for the two entries in question; I'd say that the @inproceedings entry type may be a better choice. Just because you obtained the entries from an online source (say, Google Scholar) doesn't guarantee that the material is factually correct.

\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{RefDatabase.bib}
@inproceedings{Atanasiu2000,
 Title                    = {Arithmetic with membranes},
 Author                   = {A. Atanasiu},
 Booktitle                = {Pre-proc. In Workshop on Multiset Processing, {Curtea de Arges}, Romania},
 Year                     = {2000},
 Pages                    = {1-17},
 Volume                   = {140},
 Owner                    = {HP},
 Timestamp                = {2015.05.10}
}
@Article{Chen2014,
 Title                    = {Automatic design of a {P} system for basic arithmetic operations},
 Author                   = {Y. Chen and G. Zhang and T. Wang and X. Huang},
 Journal                  = {Chinese Journal of Electronics},
 Year                     = {2014},
 Number                   = {2},
 Pages                    = {302-304},
 Volume                   = {23},
 Owner                    = {HP},
 Timestamp                = {2015.05.10}
}
@Article{Guo2013a,
 Title                    = {Fraction arithmetic operations performed by {P} systems},
 Author                   = {Guo, Ping and Zhang, Hong and Chen, H Z and Chen, J X},
 Journal                  = {Chinese Journal of Electronics},
 Year                     = {2013},
 Number                   = {4},
 Pages                    = {689-694},
 Volume                   = {22}
}
@Article{Zeng2012,
 Title                    = {Performing four basic arithmetic operations with spiking neural {P} systems},
 Author                   = {Zeng, Xiangxiang and Song, Tao and Zhang, Xingyi and Pan, Linqiang},
 Journal                  = {IEEE Transactions on NanoBioscience},
 Year                     = {2012},
 Number                   = {4},
 Pages                    = {366-374},
 Volume                   = {11},
 Publisher                = {IEEE}
}
@inproceedings{Guo2008,
 Title                    = {Arithmetic Operation in membrane system},
 Author                   = {P. Guo and J. Chen},
 Booktitle                = {Proceedings of the 2008 international conference on BioMedical Engineering and informatics},
 Year                     = {2008},
 Pages                    = {13-39},
 Owner                    = {HP},
 Timestamp                = {2015.05.10}
}
\end{filecontents}
\documentclass[preprint,12pt]{elsarticle}
\usepackage[english, spanish]{babel}
\usepackage{amssymb,amsmath,mathabx}
%%%\usepackage[]{natbib} % this package is loaded automatically
\bibliographystyle{elsarticle-num}

\begin{document}
\nocite{*}

\section*{References}
\bibliography{RefDatabase}
\end{document}

Completely agreeing with Just because you obtained the entries from an online source (say, Google Scholar) doesn't guarantee that the material is factually correct. — Johannes_B, May 10 '16 at 07:44
I do not think I need such deliberate design job difference. Everything should look uniform. Tell me how to modify the bibliography style file and I shall do that right away, if that is what will help solve the problem. Thank you for ensuring that the content of the database are in uniform @Mico. Also, the pages such as 1-7 might actually be 1--7. Please check if I was correct on this. — macpee, May 10 '16 at 07:51
To add some explanations: You have your database (.bib file) with all informations. These are processed (here by BibTeX), and then printed out (by natbib) in your document according to a layout-style (elsarticle-num). It is the latter that defines the rule "Article have parentheses, Proceedings don't". You have then 3 choices: 1) accept the rule 2) adapt the rule [it's tiresome] 3) chose another rule (i.e. chose an other \bibliographystyle). — ebosi, May 10 '16 at 07:52
@macpee - The bibliography style you're using (elsarticle-num) embeds lots of design choices. If some of the design choices are truly not acceptable, you may want to be on the lookout for a different bibliography style. A separate issue: The elsarticle-num style contains a function that converts - ("simple dash") in pages fields into -- ("en-dash") automatically. It is considered excellent typographic practice to use en-dashes to connect numbers. If you don't like this practice, you may want to switch to a system, such as MS Word, that doesn't implement any typographic practices... — Mico, May 10 '16 at 08:02
Hmmm. I shall probably talk with you guys later. In the mean time I have work to do. Thank you for all your contributions. I shall see to working alongside your comments as possible. Thank you. — macpee, May 10 '16 at 08:06
The problem still persists. Can anybody be of help? Thank you in advance. — macpee, May 12 '16 at 15:20
@macpee - The issue will persist until you switch to a different bibliography style or edit the style you're using right now. Speaking for myself, I think the issue is no problem at all. Do work on choosing more suitable entry types than "@conference". — Mico, May 12 '16 at 23:22

Reference list not uniformly displayed

1 Answers1