Selecting a Bibliography Style

The appearance of citations and the bibliography in documents created with LaTeX is determined by the LaTeX commands in your document. With these commands you select the desired package and citation style. Citavi citation styles cannot be used with LaTeX documents.

It's very important to keep in mind the distinction between BibTeX and the more modern Biblatex, since both require different commands. In Citavi, make sure to select the corresponding export: BibTeX or BibLaTeX.

For additional details concerning bibliography styles and packages, it's worth taking a look at the original documentation linked in each section below.

Please note:

Citavi cannot provide support for the use and creation of BibTeX and biblatex bibliography styles.

BibTeX

BibTeX formats the citations and the bibliography for your document using the .bib file exported from Citavi in conjunction with a bibliography style. You'll usually have to run latex and bibTeX several times. A good overview of how to use BibTeX can be found in the document TameTheBeast.

• Classical BibTeX bibliography styles

The classical BibTeX bibliography styles (plain, unsrt, abbrv, alpha) are English-language styles that apply English-language capitalization rules. To avoid this, in Citavi you can export your .bib file with the option Place capital letters in braces. However, it's better to choose a style meant for the language you are using. For example, for a German-language bibliography, you could choose one of the DIN-1505 styles.

To select the style in your document, use the command \bibliographystyle{Style name}. Insert the command \bibliography{Name of the bib file without the file extension} where you want the bibliography to appear.

If you're using the classical styles (which all use reference numbers), we recommend loading the cite package with the command \usepackage{cite} in your document's preamble.

• natbib

If you want to cite using the author-date format, the natbib package is a good alternative. Please note that this package requires alternative cite commands (\citet, \citep, …) in order to display the in-text citations correctly. However, these commands are common among other packages as well, so it's usually not difficult to switch later on. Use the BibTeX - natbib export filter in Citavi to ensure that fields are correctly mapped.

To use natbib for an author-date style with normal parentheses, load the package \usepackage{natbib} in your document preamble.

Just like with the classical BibTeX styles, a bibliography style has to be selected with \bibliographystyle{...}. The following bibliography styles are available in natbib: plainnat, abbrvnat and unsrtnat.

• apacite

The apacite package reflects the sixth edition of the APA style guidelines. If you load the package with the option natbibapa, you can use the same cite command as in natbib, which makes it easier to switch to another style later on if you need to: \usepackage[natbibapa]{apacite}. The natbib package does not need to be loaded separately. Select \bibliographystyle{apacite} as the bibliography style.

• jurabib

The jurabib package is primarily for German-language legal citation. In Citavi use the BibTeX - jurabib export filter to ensure that fields are mapped correctly. The package can be loaded with \usepackage{jurabib} and the corresponding bibliography style can be loaded with \bibliographystyle{jurabib}.

• Custom styles

BibTeX bibliography styles are created in a unique descriptive style that is difficult to learn. The package custombib makes it slightly easier to create styles using an interactive command line in the Windows command prompt that's opened with latex makebst. This method is also only recommended for advanced LaTeX users.

biblatex

In contrast to BibTeX, if the package biblatex is used, the formatting of the citations and the bibliography are controlled by the LaTeX commands and not by a descriptive language. In conjunction with biber, a new implementation of the bibtex program, it offers these advantages:

• Unicode/UTF-8 support
• No insufficient memory errors
• More flexible sorting and better handling of complex names
• Bibliographies for individual chapters can be created easily

In your editor, make sure that you select that biber should be used instead of bibtex to create the document. You can find additional information in the corresponding guide.

If you're using biblatex make sure to use the BibLaTeX export filter in Citavi.

Load the package in the preamble with \usepackage{biblatex}. Use \bibliography{Name of the bib file without the file extension} to specify the .bib file. Please note that (in contrast to BibTeX) no bibliography will be created. You'll need to use the \printbibliography command in your document.

Usually you'll also load additional packages that make it easier to work with biblatex, such as babel for language support and csquotes for quotation marks. For an author-date style that sorts alphabetically by author, year, and title, the document could look like the following:

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[style=authoryear, sorting=nyt]{biblatex}
\bibliography{DEMO-information-literacy}
\begin{document}
 
Normal citation: \cite[5]{Andretta.2004}
Citation in parentheses: \parencite[219]{Bawden.2001}
Footnote citation: \footcite{Bruce.1999}
In-text citation: \textcite{Goad.2002}
 
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Instead of the cite commands in the examples above, the natbib commands can be used if biblatex is loaded with the natbib=true option.

The APA style is also available for biblatex: biblatex-apa.