References.bib not working

Question

In the process of writing my report, I am adding the sources and articles I used.

This what I include in thesis.tex file:

\bibliographystyle{plain}
{\small
\bibliography{references}
}

and in reference.bib file, an example:

 @article{    Etienne2015,
author = "'Etienne, Jocelyn and Fouchard, Jonathan and Mitrossilis,
      D'emosth`ene and Bufi, Nathalie and Durand-Smet, Pauline
      and Asnacios, Atef",
title       = "Cells as liquid motors: Mechanosensitivity emerges from
      collective dynamics of actomyosin cortex",
journal    = "Proc Natl Acad Sci USA",
year       = "2015",
volume = "112",
issue      = "9",
pages     = "2740--2745",
doi       = "10073/pnas.1417113112"
}

But it does not work. It just put "references" in the title and nothing is added! Any help!

Answer 1

There are two, but incompatible, ways of making a bibliography in LaTeX.

• Using \usepackage{natbib} combined with running back-end bibtex on your .tex file.
• Using \usepackage{biblatex} combined with running the back-end biber on your .tex file.

---

For use of \usepackage{natbib}:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\begin{document}
See \cite{Etienne2015}.
\bibliography{references}
\end{document}

On most editors you need to select a special compile option to run bibtex. Bibtex prepares information from the .bib file to display in LaTeX.

If you can't run bibtex from your editor (if you don't know whether you can, ask me in the comments), you need to open a terminal (on Windows, go in explorer to the directory containing your .tex file and enter cmd in the address bar). First compile your .tex normally. Then execute bibtex ... in the terminal, where ... is the name of your .tex file (without the .tex extension). Now compile again.

---

For use of \usepackage{biblatex}:

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{biblatex}
\addbibresource{references.bib}
\begin{document}
See \cite{Etienne2015}.
\printbibliography
\end{document}

On most editors you need to select a special compile option to run biber. Biber prepares information from the .bib file to display in LaTeX.

If you can't run biber from your editor (if you don't know whether you can, ask me in the comments), you need to open a terminal (on Windows, go in explorer to the directory containing your .tex file and enter cmd in the address bar). First compile your .tex normally. Then execute biber ... in the terminal, where ... is the name of your .tex file (without the .tex extension). Now compile again.