Placing Works Cited (or references) in another document

Question

I have a document which uses the standard \cite to cite a reference. At the end of my document, I have a \bibliography to place the References section there. However, the fellowship I'm applying to asks to submit the essay and references in different documents. Is there any way I can split the two from each other. That is to say, have the essay on one document, and the references on another?

There is one way I can think of doing this but it doesn't use LaTeX. I have a software that can print anything to PDF. I can use it to print the essay pages to a PDF and name it Essay.pdf, and then use it to print only the references seciton to PDF and name it Works_Cited.pdf.

I didn't know what Tags this question fell under, so I apologize if I chose the wrong tags.

Answer 1

It seems it could be a simple job for biblatex.

Create a file (file1.tex)

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[style=numeric,backend=bibtex]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{yourbibliography.bib}
\begin{document}

Your essay with normal citation commands \cite{ref1,ref2}

\end{document}

then you can run bibexport yourfile to create a bib files with only the references cited in file1 and then use the following file.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[style=numeric,backend=bibtex]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{bibexport.bib}
\begin{document}
\nocite{*}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Answer 2

If you use a citation style that doesn't enumerate the citations such as with natbib and the authoryear option, then it becomes easy. Use your citations as normal.

Write your document as usual, with your citations. Don't include the bibliography. In separate (empty) LaTeX document, use \nocite{*} somewhere between \begin{document} and \end{document} to use all entries in your bibfile, and have a bibliography as normal. This document will now contain only a bibliography with all of the references in your chosen .bib file(s).

For example:

\documentclass{article}
  \usepackage[comma,authoryear]{natbib}
\begin{document}
\nocite{*}
\bibliographystyle{what_you_want}
\bibliography{your_bib_file}
\end{document}

You might want to check out the natbib documentation.