Citations with no bibliography at the end

Question

How do you produce a document with citations (\citep, \citet) working properly in the paper but without a bibliography at the end?

I've come up with one solution that is bad because it breaks my makefile.

latex file.tex
bibtex file
# comment out \bibliography{} command
latex file.tex

Similarly, is there a way to produce the bibliography with no accompanying text? Again, I've come up with a solution: fill an otherwise blank .tex file with \nocite{} commands. However, this is a pain because I have to keep two files synced by hand (and regular expressions to search for \citep{author1, author2} can be a huge pain when there are pagebreaks...).

why are you commenting out the \bibliography{} command? presumably you do have a .bib file, otherwise it makes no sense to have any \cite instructions. once bibtex has created a .bbl file from the .bib file, it doesn't matter whether the cite entries are put into the .aux file again. — barbara beeton, Oct 12 '11 at 17:40

score 71 · Answer 1 · edited Nov 07 '13 at 18:08

71

Use the \usepackage{bibentry} and then instead of \bibliography{} use \nobibliography{}.

e.g.

\nobibliography{/Users/Thomas/Dropbox/bibliography.bib}

edited Nov 07 '13 at 18:08

Marco Daniel

95,681

answered Nov 07 '13 at 18:06

Bradley

711

4

Welcome to TeX.sx! Thanks for your answer, we're looking forward to your future contributions to this Q&A. – Marco Daniel Nov 07 '13 at 18:09
4

It didn't work for me in beamer. – Caleb Stanford Jan 15 '19 at 22:26
Worked for me. Thank you for sharing your answer! – Md Amiruzzaman Mar 27 '21 at 13:34
\bibentry{label} outputs nothing for me. I'm not the only one for whom it is not working it seems: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/422161/bibentry-no-output. – Marten Mar 17 '23 at 17:17

score 31 · Answer 2 · edited Jul 17 '12 at 04:23

You can define a savebox and put the \bibliography command inside the savebox.

Here is a small example:

\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{test,
author={Name},
title={TITLE},
year={2011},
}
\end{filecontents}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\begin{document}
\cite{test}

\newsavebox\mytempbib
\savebox\mytempbib{\parbox{\textwidth}{\bibliography{test}}}

\end{document}

NOTE: If you are using biblatex you don't need such hacks.

EDIT

In relation to my answer I have a small question. What do you think about a small package which allows the user to print the bibliography or not?

Here my first try:

%% Copyright (C) 2011 by Marco Daniel
\ProvidesPackage{nobibprint}[2011/10/12 v0.1 nobibprint]
\RequirePackage{etoolbox}
\RequirePackage{xkeyval}
\define@boolkey{nobibprint.sty}[nobib@]{hide}{}
\ExecuteOptionsX{hide=true}
\ProcessOptionsX
\newsavebox\nobib@tempbox
\ifnobib@hide
   \AtBeginDocument{%
     \let\nobib@bibliography@orig\bibliography
     \def\bibliography#1{%
        \savebox\nobib@tempbox{%
           \parbox{\linewidth}{%
              \nobib@bibliography@orig{#1}%
            }%
        }%
      }%
   }
\fi
\endinput

Now simple use:

\usepackage{nobibprint}

or:

\usepackage[hide=true]{nobibprint}%default

or

\usepackage[hide=false]{nobibprint}

I certainly like the idea of the package, and will give it a shot. I don't think I understand saveboxes; will have to look those up. — keflavich, Oct 12 '11 at 21:20
Amazing, but I still had to add \bibliographystyle{} before \bibliography{}. Otherwise, this is magical. — hatmatrix, Oct 15 '12 at 20:08
Great. Just to be clear, the only thing that's needed is: \newsavebox\mytempbib \savebox\mytempbib{\parbox{\textwidth}{\bibliography{test}}} — Bjørn Kjos-Hanssen, Sep 22 '14 at 21:24

Konrad Rudolph · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-13T15:51:38.240

21

Your second request is easy: use \nocite{*}. This will produce a full bibliography, regardless of which bibliography entries are actually cited.

edited Feb 13 '16 at 15:51

answered Oct 12 '11 at 16:52

Konrad Rudolph

39,394
22
107
160

7

This is a good idea only if your .bib file contains nothing but entries you want in your bibliography. I guess that's so for the OP but thought it worth mentioning for others. It would produce something ridiculous with a common database of entries, for example. – cfr Mar 24 '14 at 00:29

score 9 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 12 '11 at 17:42

9

If you put the \bibliography command in a file, say bibcommand.tex and in the main file you say

\documentclass{book}
...
%\includeonly{}
...

\begin{document}
<the document>

\include{bibcommand}

\end{document}

then a normal compilation will include the bibliography, but commenting out \includeonly{} will omit it.

You can also add the \includeonly{} from the shell

latex "\includeonly{}\input{filename}"

(where your main file is filename.tex) and this may be included in a Makefile, I believe.

answered Oct 12 '11 at 17:42

egreg

1,121,712

So \includeonly{} forces the later \include command to be ignored? And using "latex [some latexcommand] filename" prepends the latex command to the file? Both very useful features, thanks. – keflavich Oct 12 '11 at 21:15
@Sosi I'd like to acknowledge who first taught me this trick, but it was something I read in comp.text.tex several years ago. – egreg May 09 '13 at 18:03

score 7 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 28 '11 at 16:01

Simply use biblatex and its natbib compatibility option.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[style=authoryear,natbib=true]{biblatex}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@misc{A01,
  author = {Author, A.},
  year = {2001},
  title = {Alpha},
}
\end{filecontents}

\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}

\begin{document}

Some text \citep{A01}.

% \printbibliography

\end{document}

score 1 · Answer 6 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

1

If you already have a foo.bbl file that you want to pull from (e.g. from another main document), a slight modification from this question works wonders:

\newsavebox\mytempbib
\savebox\mytempbib{\parbox{\textwidth}{\input{foo.bbl}}}

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:35

Community

1

answered Jun 06 '15 at 16:00

user2441511

309

score 1 · Answer 7 · answered Oct 30 '19 at 22:19

1

For your first question: "How do you produce a document with citations (\citep, \citet) working properly in the paper but without a bibliography at the end?"

This maybe a dirty solution, but please try adding \vspace*{-200in} right before your \bibliography{} command. I think the whole references then go to somewhere too high to be seen.

answered Oct 30 '19 at 22:19

My Cell

11

This is really great solution. – Myshkin Jul 07 '22 at 18:29

score 0 · Answer 8 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

0

I used a sorta hack :)

Compiling only a page range or page selection

this gives info on page selection while making pdf ... I put a \newpage before bibliography and just didn't compile those pages ...

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Community

1

answered Aug 03 '14 at 18:54

ankhi

457
1
5
18

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Oct 24 '11 at 13:31

Your makefile can empty the *.bbl file. If you want to use Konrad's suggestion to separately compile the bibliography, you can try the following (untested):

file.dvi: file.tex
        latex file
        bibtex file
        mv -f file.bbl references.bbl; touch file.bbl
        latex file
        latex references

where references.tex is the Latex file that invokes \nocite{*}.

Citations with no bibliography at the end

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