TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange
TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [biblatex]

{biblatex} is a complete reimplementation of the bibliographic facilities provided by LaTeX. It has its own backend {biber} which can be used instead of {bibtex} and which supports, e.g., full {unicode}, highly customisable sorting, data source filtering, and customisable field inheritance.

biblatex provides advanced bibliographic typesetting features for LaTeX. It can be used as a replacement for packages like natbib. It is used either within a normal latex bibtex latex compile cycle, or with biber replacing bibtex.

Related tags

If your question concerns bibliography formatting generally you might want to use the tag in addition to this tag. If your question is about a specific .bst style, or natbib you should use the and/or tags instead.

Should I use biblatex or natbib?

Humanities style citations

biblatex is almost required if you need any of the following:

  • humanities style citations (author-title type schemes; citations using ibid etc.)
  • a much wider array of BibTeX database fields (again, especially suited for the humanities)
  • Unicode encoded .bib files (usable with the biber replacement for bibtex)
  • fine control over your own bibliography styles using regular latex methods

Author-year and numeric citations

biblatex provides the same functionality as natbib for author-year and numeric citations common in the natural and social sciences. It can therefore be used as a replacement for natbib.

You might want to use natbib if:

  • there is a .bst file already created for the specific journal you submitting a paper to;
  • a journal accepts latex submissions and requires or expects natbib. Such journal may not accept biblatex for the bibliography.

However, many new journal styles are being created for biblatex, so this may become less of a problem. Given the flexibility of adapting biblatex styles, in many cases it may be quite easy to modify an existing style to accommodate a particular journal's style.

Available biblatex styles

In addition to the standard styles that are documented in the biblatex manual, CTAN currently lists the following extra style packages for biblatex:

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Guidelines for customizing biblatex styles

Suppose I've just made the switch to biblatex. I have chosen one of the built-in styles (numeric, alphabetic, authoryear, authortitle, verbose) or of the custom styles available at CTAN, and I've figured out how to sort/compress citations. The…
lockstep
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What to do to switch to biblatex?

Because of the great answers posted around in the site, I'm finally considering to do the switch and move to biblatex. So, the question is what do I have to do? To give the question some focus, assume that I already have a somewhat largish .bib file…
Juan A. Navarro
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biblatex in a nutshell (for beginners)

Is there a 'biblatex in a nutshell' guide out there? I'd like if someone explained to me the essentials on how to use biblatex (what lines I have to write in my document, which files I have to have, how many times and what I have to compile), so…
slackenerny
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Get full name twice in Bibliography

I use biblatex with style=authoryear and when there are two references of the same author in the bibliography there is just a dash. How can I get the full name in the second entry too?
pirad
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biblatex, authoryear style: In-text citations display first name initials for certain bibliography entries

I'm using biblatex with the authoryear style and two of my bibliography entries include the initials of the first author when cited in-text (R. Chen and Holmes, 2006 and B.J. Chen et al., 2008 shown below). Only these two entries are affected: I…
Baldwin
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How can I create entirely new data types with BibLaTeX/Biber?

The title is pretty self-explanatory. I need something similar to Add new field to biblatex entries, but for completely new entry types. (IIUC, the linked just shuffles one type onto another.) I'm trying to define a @stackexchange type where I can…
Sean Allred
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Bibliography with only initials of names

I have a .bib file created automatically with jabRef. When I use it in my thesis some of the author names are full and some only initial letter. Why? How can I have only inital for all? Here is a MWE: …
Stefano_g
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Biblatex: changing the order of entries

I switched to biblatex only recently and I'm still struggling with understanding how to do things properly. My question is: How to change the order of entries/units/blocks in the bibliography? The style I'm using is "numeric". Now, the default order…
aqua
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How to cite a standard (ISO, etc.) in BibLaTeX?

I want to cite an ISO standard using BibLaTeX. All guidelines I found for BibTeX suggested using misc and replacing the author and editor fields by a number field which was then the full string denoting the ISO standard ("ISO 9241-210:2010" say).…
Christian
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Disable ISSN but keep ISBN with biblatex

I'm writing a document where I want ISBNs to be shown for books so I have turned on the isbn option. This causes the ISSN for journals to be shown when I reference an article. Is there a way to enable ISBNs but dissable ISSNs? They seem to be…
Darling
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Setting up TexMaker on Ubuntu "biblatex.sty not found."

--UPDATE-- I've installed biblatex via the command "sudo apt-get install biblatex". However I now get a partially generated pdf like this: instead of the desired output of: --UPDATE-- I've found TexMaker very easy and helpful with the pdf file…
John Crawford
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Biblatex still won't print bibliography

I have read all the related questions and taken all the suggested steps (well, the ones that had anything to do with my situation since for example I am not using XeLaTeX). As far as I can see, this file ought to produce a pdf with one citation in…
Colin McLarty
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Biblatex supercite command with use of square brackets (like a reference style in Wikipedia)

In my report I would like to have the square brackets around the citations as superscripts (like in the Wikipedia style) using \supercite command. The default \supercite{} command in biblatex package gives a number without brackets. I have found a…
Vladimir S.
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Add new field to biblatex entries

Many of the books I use are parts of series. biblatex gives you more fields to add bibliographic information to than BibTeX does, but it has no fields appropriate for the editor of a series. If I use the EDITOR field, the bibliography will (by…
Sverre
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Biblatex 3.3 name formatting

I would like to create a custom format for citing authors' names in the text, let's call it "newformat". One option I can think of is creating a new bibmacro for names where the parameters are changed to my liking, such as \documentclass{article} …
Denis Cousineau
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