BibTeX

BibTeX is a program and a plain-text file format designed to manage bibliographic data for LaTeX documents. It was created in the mid-1980s as part of the TeX/LaTeX ecosystem and remains widely used for producing consistent bibliographies. BibTeX files typically have the .bib extension and contain entries representing sources such as journal articles, books, conference proceedings, and reports.

A BibTeX database consists of records, each starting with an entry type such as @article, @book, @inproceedings, @incollection, @phdthesis, @mastersthesis, or @techreport. Within an entry, fields provide metadata such as author, title, year, journal or booktitle, volume, number, pages, editor, organization, address, edition, month, doi, and url. Fields are optional and many combinations are valid; entries may list multiple authors separated by "and." The data in a .bib file is intended to be formatted by a separate style file (.bst) to produce the bibliography in a chosen citation style.

Using BibTeX involves including citations in a LaTeX document with commands like \cite{key}, selecting a bibliography style with \bibliographystyle{plain}, and referencing the bibliography file with \bibliography{myrefs}. The typical workflow is to run LaTeX, BibTeX, then LaTeX again (and sometimes again) to incorporate the formatted bibliography. Styles determine alphabetical or order-based sorting, punctuation, and formatting of authors, titles, and venue information.

While BibTeX remains common, newer approaches such as BibLaTeX with the biber backend offer enhanced features and better Unicode support. Handling non-English characters often requires braces or specific encoding practices. Example entry:

@article{key01,

author = {Doe, John and Smith, Jane},

title = {An example article},

journal = {Journal of Examples},

year = {2021},

volume = {10},

number = {2},

pages = {100-110},

doi = {10.1234/example}

}