44

I'm using a this freely downloadable latex class file and the style is set to \bibliographystyle{ieeetr}. But when I cite something with \cite{} I get it inside ().

For example I get it as abc et al. (1) but what I want to get is abc et al. [1].

Please tell me how to get my citations inside [ ] ?

samsamara
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  • I found the line 50: \usepackage[round, sort, numbers]{natbib} It is possible that "round" makes the trouble – MasterPJ Nov 13 '12 at 14:24
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    The class is meant for submission to IEEE conferences. So the output is like they want. – egreg Nov 13 '12 at 14:25
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    @egreg no this is a thesis template. And even in IEEE papers I haven't seen citing with parenthesis, it's using []. – samsamara Nov 13 '12 at 14:59

4 Answers4

51

You can simply say

\setcitestyle{square}

in your document preamble (see natbib documentation, section 2.9).

However, if you're using the class for a submission to an IEEE conference, leave as they want.

egreg
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  • I have also the same problem, I want to use citation with square. I have set natbib=true, but when I write "\setcitestyle{square}", it comes out error "! Undefined control sequence. \setcitestyle l.20 \setcitestyle". Could you have a look? Thank you .http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/342866/how-to-customize-citation-style-and-references – Vivian Dec 08 '16 at 12:29
18

The reason why you are getting citation numbers inside parentheses instead of square brackets is that in the class file you use, the package natbib is loaded with the option round, see line 51:

\usepackage[round, sort, numbers]{natbib}

Just replace this line with

\usepackage[sort, numbers]{natbib}

save your class file, compile your .tex file and you should get square brackets. Alternatively, simply adding \setcitestyle{square} in the preamble of your document without modifying the class file itself should work.

Note, however, that you may also have to edit the bibliographic style to change the style of the bibliographic number (at present, is it enclosed by parentheses or square brackets?) for each item in the Bibliography section.

Corentin
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2

To complement egreg's answer, class files (like for the journal Annual Review) can set the open and close characters at \begin{document}. In that case, \setcitestyle{square} only works if it comes after \begin{document}.

user942648
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  • Why would this be the case? Could you be using a specific document class? Can you provide example code (in minimal form) that replicates this? – Werner Jun 11 '20 at 15:58
  • @Werner, this is when using the class file for the journal Annual Reviews. I will edit my answer to reflect this. – user942648 Jun 12 '20 at 16:14
-1

This works for me:

\usepackage{natbib}
\setcitestyle{numbers}
\setcitestyle{square}

Output:

[x]

x denotes the number of the reference.

TomGiavas
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