Citep only works as cite?

Question

In an ideal situation using natbib and abbrvnat, citations e.g. \citet{Jones2004} and '\citep{Jones2004}' would have given Jones et al. (2004) and (Jones et al., 2004) respectively.

Unfortunately I don't get that, instead I get

\citep{Jones2004} gives me ===> '(Jones, Giannini and Chang, 2004)'

Previously, @egreg, @lockstep: I followed your last idea by removing numbers from

\usepackage[square,numbers,round,comma,sort&compress,longnamesfirst]{natbib},

and citations are picked quite well, except that '\citep{}' in the text doesn't work but if I try it on plain part of a page, it works. An example as below.

However, if I remove longnamefirst, it works but then I lose the style of having longnamefirst in the Bibliography content. Nevertheless, I've got another bibliographystyle that I tweaked but it would be useful if others could know this effect and may be the solution.

\documentclass[a4paper, 11pt, twoside]{article} \usepackage[round,authoryear,semicolon,sort&compress,longnamefirst]{natbib} \usepackage{hyperref} \usepackage{filecontents}`

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}

@misc{A01,

author = {Jones, A. and James, C., and Giannini, J.},

year = {2001},

title = {Title of journal article},

}

\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}

Space is such an alien environment that attempting to work \citep{A01} in it requires new techniques and knowledge.\

\citep{A01}\\

\bibliographystyle{plainnat}

\bibliography{\jobname}

\end{document}

Answer 1

This minimal example works for me.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{natbib}

\usepackage{hyperref}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@misc{A01,
  author = {Author, A.},
  year = {2001},
  title = {Alpha},
}
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}

\citet{A01}

\citep{A01}

\bibliographystyle{abbrvnat}
\bibliography{\jobname}

\end{document}

(The filecontents environment is only used to include some external files directly into the example, so that it compiles. It is not necessary for the solution.)

Answer 2

When natbib is loaded with the numbers option, i.e.,

\usepackage[...,numbers,...]{natbib}

the command \citep behaves like the usual \cite, while \citet prints "Author name(s) [x]", where "x" is the numeric reference. In this case only the number is made a link to the bibliography. On the contrary, with the default author-year citation system, all the "Author name(s) (year)" given by \citet and "(Author name(s), year)" given by \citep become a link to the bibliography.