LaTeX is a typesetting program that takes a plain text file with various commands in it and converts it to a formatted document based on the commands that it has been given. The source file for the document has a file extension of .tex. It is widely used for theses and other technical papers due to its prowess with mathematical and foreign characters.
BibTex is a bibliographic tool that is used with LaTeX to help organize the user's references and create a bibliography. A BibTex user creates a bibliography file that is separate from the LaTeX source file, wth a file extension of .bib. Each reference in the bibliography file is formatted with a certain structure and is given a "key" by which the author can refer to it in the source file. For more information on BibTeX, see the section of the Athena On-Line Help System's LaTeX documentation called Using a Bibliography.
Log into RefWorks on your web browser. Move all of the references that you'd like to cite into a separate folder. Go to the References menu and select Export. In the drop-down menu, choose the folder that contains the references you'd like to cite in your document. From the list of export types, click the radio button next to BibTeX - RefWorks ID. Now click Export to Text File.
A text file containing information for each of your references should appear (if it doesn't, click Download It). From the File menu, select Save Page As. Navigate to the directory where you are storing your manuscript. Change the name of the file that you are saving to filename.bib. Then click Save. This will save your references in the correct format for BibTeX to read and create a bibliography from.
To link the bibliography file that you just downloaded to your document, you need to enter two commands:
\bibliographystyle{style} should go just inside your \begin{document} command. style.bst is the name of the style file dictating the format of your bibliography (see How do I change the format of the bibliography? below).
\bibliography{filename} should go wherever you want LaTeX to generate the bibliography. filename.bib is the name of the file that you just downloaded from RefWorks containing your exported references.
Insert the command \cite{RefWorks:#} where "#" is the RefWorks ID number of the reference you are citing.
BibTeX has a 5000 character limit for each field. Most fields will not surpass this limit, but for a reference where the "note" field contains a large amount of information such as the entire table of contents, this limit may be breached. When this problem occurs, you will see an error message saying "Sorry--you've exceeded BibTeX's buffer size 5000." When you encounter this problem, use a text editor to open your bibliography file and shorten the field that contains too many characters.
If the references in your bibliography file contain certain special characters which are used as part of the syntax of LaTeX, you could see a whole host of errors when you run LaTeX on your document after running BibTeX. For example, LaTeX will view any ampersand in a journal title as an alignment character, and you will see an error message saying "Misplaced alignment tab character &." Use a text editor to find the line that is causing the error (LaTeX should tell you as part of its error message) and replace the trouble-making character with the following commands:
| Character | LaTeX Command |
| # | \# |
| $ | \$ |
| % | \% |
| & | \& |
| _ | \_ |
| { | \{ |
| } | \} |
| ~ | \~{ } |
| ^ | \^{ } |
| \ | $\backslash$ |
If you receive a warning from LaTeX that references may have changed, simply run LaTeX again. In fact, the correct order for running LaTeX and BibTeX, where document is your document name, is:
latex document
bibtex document
latex document
latex document
This process should correctly create your bibliography and in-text citations for your document.
BibTeX reads text in the author field as an author's name or names unless told otherwise. For example, say a reference exported from RefWorks contains the line:
author={Institute of Electrical Engineers},
BibTeX will read this field as a person's name, where the first name is "Institute" and the last name is "of Electrical Engineers," and would format accordingly. Use a text editor and to add quotes around the field so that the line reads:
author="{Institute of Electrical Engineers}",
Now BibTeX will read this all as one piece rather than as a person's name, and will format correctly.
BibTeX attempts to correct the capitalization in the title field such that only the first letter of the first word is capitalized. While this is generally grammatically correct, it can cause problems if the title contains a proper name or an acronym, so that a line in the bibliography file that looks like this:
title={IEE Proceedings},
will appear in the bibliography as "Iee proceedings." Use a text editor and to add quotes around the field so that the line reads:
title="{IEE Proceedings}",
The quotes will prevent BibTeX from applying its capitalization rules to the title of the document and thus will preserve the capitalization for proper nouns.
The bibliography format is determined by the style file that you have entered in the \bibliographystyle{} command. Several default styles exist, they are explained in the section of IST's Latex Answers page entitled How to make BIBLIOGRAPHIES in Latex. Style files may also be edited to produce a required bibliography style.