\citep is not working

Question

I am new to LaTeX (MiKTeX version) and try to get authoryear citation e.g. (Hugh et al., 2009) using \citep{MCOSW}. But rather it shows the whole list of authors with year at the end e.g. (Hugh Glaser, Afraz Jafri, and Ian Millard, April 2009). How can I force it to show et al. I am using natbib package. List of packages along with style and bib is mentioned below:

\usepackage{epsfig}           
\usepackage{graphics}         
\usepackage{subfigure}           
\usepackage{fancyheadings}          
\usepackage{float}          
\usepackage{times}       
\usepackage{amsmath,amsfonts,amssymb,amscd,amsthm,xspace}         
\usepackage{algorithmic}         
\usepackage{algorithm2e}        
\usepackage{verbatim}        
\usepackage{appendix}         
\usepackage[round,authoryear,comma,sort&compress,numbers]{natbib}       
\usepackage{hyperref}

\bibliographystyle{plainnat}

@article {MCOSW,
author = "{Hugh Glaser, Afraz Jafri, and Ian Millard}",
title = "{Managing co-reference on the semantic web.}",
journal = "{In WWW2009 Workshop: Linked Data on the Web (LDOW2009)}",
year = "{April 2009}",
}

Could anyone of you please help. Thanks

Answer 1

Don't overuse braces, and treat your BibTeX keys as data (don't mix months and years together), rather than formatted output. If you have a list of authors, separate each name with an and, and let BibTeX figure out how to split them.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}

\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article {MCOSW,
author = "Hugh Glaser and Afraz Jafri and Ian Millard",
title = "Managing co-reference on the semantic web",
journal = "WWW2009 Workshop: Linked Data on the Web (LDOW2009)",
month = "April",
year = "2009",
}
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}
I once read \citep{MCOSW}.

\bibliography{\jobname}
\end{document}

Notice that BibTeX:

• puts the correct et al. in my citation
• puts commas where needed in the bibliography listing
• puts a period at the end of the article title
• uses the month and year if the bibliography style requires it (and both items are known)

See also Andy Roberts' Bibliographies - Getting to grips with LaTeX, particularly the "Authors" section.