Č doesn't sort in bibliography correctly but {\v C} does

Question

I have an example here of an article document using pdflatex, bibtex, and natbib, where the Č character for Čermak isn't sorted in the bibliography correctly. I don't understand why not. Both files are encoded as utf-8 by my editor, and the pdf shows the character correctly. If instead I use {\v C} in the bib file, the sorting is correct (so obviously this is my current workaround, but I don't want to have to do it for all my refs if I don't have to).

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper,final]{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{natbib}
\begin{document}
See \cite{cermak_heat_1985,ingebritsen_sanford_1999}
\bibliographystyle{apalike} 
\bibliography{mwe} 
\end{document}

and the bib file:

@BOOK{ingebritsen_sanford_1999,
  title = {Groundwater in geologic processes},
  publisher = {Cambridge University Press},
  year = {1999},
  author = {Ingebritsen, S. E. and Sanford, Ward E.},
  pages = {341}
}
@ARTICLE{cermak_heat_1985,
  author = {Čermak, Vladimír and Jetel, Ján},
  title = {Heat flow and ground water movement in the {B}ohemian {C}retaceous {B}asin
    ({C}zechoslovakia)},
  journal = {Journal of Geodynamics},
  year = {1985},
  volume = {4},
  pages = {285--303},
  number = {1–4},
}

Answer 1

BibTeX can not handle UTF8 characters, when it comes to sorting everything must be ASCII. So the Č is ignored in sorting. To deal with other characters, BibTeX has the rule that {\command{C}} is supposed to be a fancy accent, and should be sorted as C. Your options are thus to either switch to biblatex, or encode all author names with the "fancy accent" style:

author = {{\v{C}}ermak, Vladim{\'{\i}}r and Jetel, J{\'a}n}

See also the manual for the ugly details.