Natbib: cite in text with first name or initial

Question

One of my references is J. Doe (1999). In the bib file it might looks like this:

@article{doe-1999,
 author="John Doe",
 title="Some Paper",
 journal="Some Journal",
 volume=1, number=1, pages={1--10}, year=1999}

My preamble looks like

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{natbib}
\usepackage{hyperref}  % Hyperlinks bib references.
\begin{document}
  Please see \cite{doe-1999}.
  \bibliographystyle{plainnat}
  \bibliography{mybib}
\end{document}

In the text, I normally cite it using \cite{doe-1999} and that's great. But there's one spot in my document where I'd like to include Doe's first initial (or his first name if I include it in the bib). I'm using natbib/plainnat author-year style. Is there a command that would help me get "J. Doe (1999)" or "John Doe (1999)" in the text and still have the whole thing hyperlinked by way of hyperref?

Answer 1

If you want to do it for a few cases, a simpler solution is to define an alias and use \citealias.

For your example, in the preamble, define:

\defcitealias{smith13}{Waldo Smith (2013)}

And in the text use:

\citetalias{smith13}

The result will be Waldo Smith (2013) in the text, with the reference added in the same way as the other references. If you use \citet{smith13}, you return to the usual Smith (2013).

The command \citetalias is available with the package natbib. So, you have to include \usepackage{natbib} in the preamble.

Note: this question is related to Author's full first name with citation-in-text (citet{} directives)

Answer 2

With the standard natbib styles, the \citet*{...} and \citep*{...} commands give complete author lists as opposed to the possibly abbreviated author lists that are obtained with \citet{...} and \citep{...}. We will modify this long author list to also contain first names.

1. Make a copy of plainnat.bst, say plainnat2.bst, and put it in a place where BibTeX can find it.

2. Open the copy in an editor, and locate the function format.full.names. It should be at line 306. Change the line

   "{vv~}{ll}" format.name$ 't :=
   

   into

   "{ff~}{vv~}{ll}" format.name$ 't :=   %% added {ff~}
   

3. Save and close it.

Use it as normal:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{natbib}
\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}

\begin{document}
Short form: \citet{Ca04}, \citet{MeGa05}, \citet{MaGaJoGoAsFrFr00}.

\medskip
Long form: \citet*{Ca04}, \citet*{MeGa05}, \citet*{MaGaJoGoAsFrFr00}.

% \bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\bibliographystyle{plainnat2}
\bibliography{test}
\end{document}