How to get custom text in bibliography?

Question

Dears, sorry for the format. I am typing this on my phone as my laptop battery ran out. I am trying to add a custom sentence to my ‘references’ section in my ACM paper.

In my main.tex I have included:

\bibliographystyle{ACM-Reference-Format}
\bibliography{references}

And in my references.bib I have all my bibtex references. Then obviously, as I am citing certain articles, at the end of my paper a reference section is generated.

How can I add a custom text to the reference section on the first line? Currently, I have that custom line above the references section as you can see in the image attached. The custom text I want to get in there is: “All the references were accessed in the months September and October 2019.”

This is what it currently looks like:

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 25 '19 at 12:53

Taking heavy inspiration from this answer one could patch the bibliography environment as follows.

\documentclass{acmart}

\usepackage{etoolbox}

\patchcmd{\thebibliography}{\list}{\printbibprolog\list}{}{}
\newcommand{\bibprolog}[1]{%
  \def\printbibprolog{%
#1
}%
}
\def\printbibprolog{} % initialize

\begin{filecontents}{references.bib}
@article{hmm,
  authour      = {Bonde, Tonny},
  title        = {How to Hmm Properly},
  journal      = {Serious Scientific Journal},
  year         = {1920},
}
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}
Yo\cite{hmm}

\bibprolog{All the references were accessed in the months September and October 2019.}


\bibliographystyle{ACM-Reference-Format}
\bibliography{references}
\end{document}

The referenced answer also contains other solutions if you use natbib or the memoir document class. Additionally if you switch to biblatex you could use the \bibsetup command.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 26 '19 at 09:13

For reference, with biblatex, which is highly customizable, the prenote= option of the \printbibliography command does exactly this. The note needs to be defined with \defbibnote. postnote= is also available.

Example of use:

MWE:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[style=numeric,
        ]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\defbibnote{myprenote}{This is a \textit{pre}-note. It comes before the bibliography.}

\defbibnote{mypostnote}{And this is a postnote.}


\begin{document}
Text\cite{aksin}
\cite{angenendt}
\cite{baez/article}

\printbibliography[
    prenote=myprenote,
    postnote=mypostnote,
    title=A list of my references,
    ]

\end{document}

Not an answer, because, ironically, the ACM uses natbib/bibtex (per the manual, section 2.11, p23), not biblatex/biber. Doing otherwise "may delay the processing of the manuscript".

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 25 '19 at 12:30

You could start your own references section, add your custom text, and then locally redefine \section (as per https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/22654/199342) so that the bibliography doesn't start a new section.

\documentclass{acmart}

\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{references.bib}
@BOOK{DUMMY,
AUTHOR="John Doe",
TITLE="The Book Title",
PUBLISHER="Dummy Publisher",
YEAR="2019",
}
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}
\cite{DUMMY}

\section*{\refname}
All the references were accessed in the months September and October 2019.
\begingroup
\renewcommand{\section}[2]{}%
\bibliographystyle{ACM-Reference-Format}
\bibliography{references}
\endgroup
\end{document}

How to get custom text in bibliography?

3 Answers3