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I have often wished for a short but informative bibtex style which would allow bibliographic entries to display on 1 or 2 lines on the final slide(s) of a beamer presentation. I suspect that only 3 entries will display per slide at normal font size using the plain stype option. The goal would be to display 5 to 10 entries per slide with an optimized style file.

The way to go about this would seem to be:

  1. Display only the first author, followed by et al. for 3+ authors
  2. Display only the Author last name(s), initials omitted.
  3. Use shortened version of journal name.
  4. Omit entirely fields such as doi, url, etc.

Posts which seem relevant are: this one, this one, and of course this one.

I have had some success with the following:

\usepackage[backend=biber,%
isbn=false,%
style=nature,%
firstinits=false,
maxbibnames=2,%
]{biblatex}

noting that one has to install the biblatex-nature package. I'm interested in capturing the attributes of the `nature' style, and those passed as options to biblatex into a single file; defining a custom biblatex style.

One can further shorten the entries by masking individual fields with:

\AtEveryBibitem{%
  \clearfield{note}%
  \clearfield{title}%
  \clearfield{month}%
}%
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John Chris
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  • Does it have to be bibtex? In biblatex such things are pretty easy. – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz Jul 14 '16 at 14:47
  • Abbreviated journal names require changing your .bib file. See Is there a transparent way to automatically abbreviate journal names? for a good way to do this. The other bits can be done trivially with package loading options if you use biblatex. – Alan Munn Jul 14 '16 at 14:49
  • biblatex may be an option. Are multibib and biblatex compatible? – John Chris Jul 14 '16 at 14:52
  • No, but biblatex can do whatever multibib can do. – Alan Munn Jul 14 '16 at 14:57
  • And actually journal abbreviation can be done with biblatex/biber without changing the .bib file. See Show journal abbreviation in reference list with biblatex/biber – Alan Munn Jul 14 '16 at 15:08
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    The best approach, really, is not to list any references in a beamer presentation, period. All you will achieve is bore your audience to tears. A bibliography belongs in a written paper, not a presentation. – Mico Jul 14 '16 at 19:52
  • Fair enough, @Mico, I agree. For what it's worth I was asked to summarize a short set of papers and feel as though it is justifiable to present the list. – John Chris Jul 14 '16 at 21:24
  • I have edited the question and am looking for a nice example of a nature-like, custom biblatex format. – John Chris Aug 15 '16 at 21:06
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    Why can't you use the nature style? (Do you want more modifications) What exactly needs to be "custom" about your style? Does it really need to be in a separate file? – moewe Aug 16 '16 at 08:33
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    See also What is the easiest way to generate a compact bibliography?, though that might be too compact for your liking. – moewe Aug 16 '16 at 10:27
  • I figure that the value is in reducing the a few ones to tens of lines of code to a single word e.g. \usepackage[style=<style name>]{biblatex}. I have amended the question to include additional code which brings me to where I want to be. Would it not be useful to be able to call some function which captures the current style and writes it to the appropriate biblatex style file type? – John Chris Aug 16 '16 at 14:41
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    Your new edit only has me more confused: What should an answer tell you exactly? (Also what about my questions in my comment above?) – moewe Aug 16 '16 at 14:42
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    I just saw your new comment now. I think it depends. If you have only a few additional lines that are furthermore applicable to several styles (as are \clearfield & some options), I would not bother stuffing it into a new style; but you can put the code into an external file and load it with \input. Only if you define a new style altogether or have very many modifications would it make sense to define a new style. (In any case there is not really an automatic way to make a .bbx from a bit of code.) – moewe Aug 16 '16 at 14:45
  • The nature style is has been working, but in the text e.g. the citation, I'm looking for a <author|author 1 & author 2|author 1 et al.>,(<year>) format rather than numeric in square brackets. In the bibliography, I would like the entries to be numbered as in the nature style. – John Chris Aug 16 '16 at 19:12
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    But does that make sense? Why would you number the references if you don't use the number because you have an author-year citation style? (Having read my comment above, do you still insist on a separate style?) – moewe Aug 17 '16 at 07:21
  • Using \citeauthor*{} to get a text citation (while the bib entries remain numbered in the bibliography) using the modified nature style now gives me everything I'm looking for. I think I would still like to compartmentalize all of the custom tweaks to the style into a new style file. – John Chris Sep 06 '16 at 17:07
  • If you got what you need, maybe you want to add an self-answer, so we can mark this question as solved. If you really insist on a separate file, you can ask a new question about that. – moewe Sep 07 '16 at 08:17

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