BibTeX: Author's surname followed by multiple initials

Question

I'm having some difficulty trying to get BibTeX to show an Author's surname followed by multiple initials in my bibliography. I have quite a large bibliography and I have several authors, including myself, that have very common first names and surnames (e.g. Smith, C.). The only way to distinguish ourselves is by our middle initials.

I've used this answer here to create a "myplainnat.bst", replacing

{ s nameptr "{ff~}{vv~}{ll}{, jj}" format.name$ 't :=

with

{ s nameptr "{vv~}{ll}{, f.}{, jj}" format.name$ 't :=

so that I get a reference that is formatted:

Other, A., Other, A. Title. Journal. vvv.iii.pp-pp. DOI

But I can't work out which bit of the code I'm supposed to change to get something along the lines of:

Other, A.N. Other, A.J. Title. Journal. vvv.iii.pp-pp. DOI

Initially I thought it would be the f's in the code, so I added f.f.f. but this prevented any initials from being displayed. If anyone could shed some light on this that would be great.

Here's a MWE of my code:

Document:

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{report}
% International language package - allows use of special characters
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
% Natural bibliography package - allows compliation of a bibliography
\usepackage[round,colon]{natbib}
% Caption package - allows captioning of figures and tables
\usepackage{url}
% Nomenclature package - allows for the creation of a nomenclature

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%%  DOCUMENT  %%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\begin{document}

\chapter{Literature review}
\section{Radioactive decay}\label{sec:radioactive decay}

I'd like to cite some text with author's with multiple initials \citep{fitch1974timescale}.  And here's another one \citep{buchholz2007uranium}.

\bibliographystyle{myplainnat}
\bibliography{bibliography}

\end{document}

Bibliography:

@article{fitch1974timescale,
   author = {Fitch, F. J. and Forster, S. C. and Miller, J. A.},
   title = {{Geological time scale}},
   journal = {Reports on Progress in Physics},
   volume = {37},
   number = {11},
   pages = {1433-1496},
   abstract = {Presents a brief discussion of the assumptions, accuracy and precision of 'geological' errors present in physical geochronometry. The five major physical methods of rock and mineral age determinations currently in use, are described.},
   year = {1974}
}

@article{buchholz2007uranium,
   author = {Buchholz, B.A. and Brown, T.A. and Hamilton, T.F. and Hutcheon, I.D. and Marchetti, A.A. and Martinelli, R.E. and Ramon, E.C. and Tumey, S.J. and Williams, R.W.},
   title = {{Investigating uranium isotopic distributions in environmental samples using AMS and MC-ICPMS}},
   journal = {Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms},
   volume = {259},
   number = {1},
   pages = {733-738},
   year = {2007},
   doi = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nimb.2007.01.248}
}

And here's a link to my modified myplainnat.bst file.

Here's an image of what my bibliography output looks like, as you can see each author only shows one initial, despite multiple initials being present in the bibliography file.

Answer 1

Thanks for posting a complete MWE and a couple of bib entries. The problem, it turns out, is that in the entry buchholz2007uranium the authors' first and middle initials are clumped together without an intervening space. If you set the author field of that entry to

   author = {Buchholz, B. A. and Brown, T. A. and Hamilton, T. F. and Hutcheon, I. D. 
             and Marchetti, A. A. and Martinelli, R. E. and Ramon, E. C. and Tumey, S. J. 
             and Williams, R. W.},

you'll be in business.