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I am trying to add an entry from my .bib file into a document. After the \bibliography command is issued, the following sections starts in a new page. I have looked around but have not been able to find out about page breaks after the References section, given that the usual expected place for it is at the end of the document.

Why is the page break happening and how can I prevent it?

My document structure is dead simple:

\documentclass[10pt]{article}
\usepackage[round]{natbib}
%\usepackage{fullpage}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\title{Author (year): Name of the article I am reviewing}
\author{Ricardo}
%
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\begin{abstract}
\lipsum[1]
\end{abstract}
\renewcommand{\refname}{\section*{SectionNo1}}
\bibliographystyle{apalike}
\bibliography{bibfile}
\nocite{reKkey}
\section*{SectionNo2}
\section*{SectionNo3}
\section*{SectionNo4}
\section*{SectionNo5}
\section*{SectionNo6}
\section*{SectionNo7}
\section*{SectionNo8}
\section*{SectionNo9}
\section*{SectionNo10}
\end{document}

New info Furthermore, I am compiling to PDF on MacTeX TeXLive 2009 on AucTeX 11.86. Using the fullpage package does not change the behavior, so I commented it out. I just started my document skeleton, so this is, literally, all I have at the time.

The page break disappears if I write anything under any of the sections 2 through 4 (2 through 8 using the fullpage package. With this new information, I don't expect the page break to be a problem anymore. However, I am still interested in knowing why this is happening.

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2  
I can't reproduce your problem with your example above and an examples.bib and a citation. Try to make a real, complete example that demonstrates your problem instead of simply showing your document "structure". You can insert arbitrary text with the lipsum package or insert spaces with \vspace*-commands. – Ulrike Fischer May 2 '11 at 9:19
@Ulrike Fischer, I updated the document structure to reflect what I actually have. My document is exactly that simple. I don't suppose the names of the sections will have any impact on the result, specially since they are three-words long at the longest. I noticed the page break behavior changed when I added more text to most any of the sections past SectionNo2. I did not try to manually add space with \vspace* because it feels too much like a hack to correct something that should default to being right from the start. I mean, I had no way to predict that a page break would happen. – Ricardo May 2 '11 at 16:30
1  
I didn't meant you should insert \vspace to correct your problem, but as a tool to demonstrate it. With e.g.\vspace*{10\baselineskip} you can avoid to have to enter 10 lines of text in your example. lockstep has explained the source of your problem: LaTeX has to break somewhere and after the bibliography was better then after a \section*. – Ulrike Fischer May 2 '11 at 16:43
Oh, My mistake. I thought you meant I could use negative spacing to bring the next section above the page break. Your explanation makes more sense than what I had interpreted. Thanks for the help! – Ricardo May 2 '11 at 17:13

1 Answer

up vote 2 down vote accepted

LaTeX strongly discourages page breaks after section headings. By writing \section* nine times without adding "normal" text after any of these headings, you practically forced LaTeX to add a page break after the last bibliography entry (which counts as "normal" text). Writing anything after a section heading adds a desirable page break afterwards.

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Well, this makes sense. Thanks! I learned something new today. Also, thanks for editing the tags. – Ricardo May 2 '11 at 17:12

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