Full name and year as BibTeX key

Question

I'd like to reference BibTeX sources with full name and year, e. g. [Adams1979]. Is there an easy way to to this?

Answer 1

Take a look at the natbib or biblatex packages. Either should be able to do what you want.

Edit: Take a look at \setcitestyle for natbib.

Edit 2: Here's a complete example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[authoryear]{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\setcitestyle{square,aysep={}}
\begin{document}
\citep{adams:79}
\bibliography{test}
\end{document}

And the .bib:

@Article{adams:79,
        author = {Foo Adams},
        year = 1979,
        title = {Test},
        journal = {Test},
}

Answer 2

You don't have to use natbib to get the references with full name and year. You can do the same by using apalike bibliographystyle and you'll just type the following snippet in your tex file:

\bibliographystyle{apalike}

Answer 3

Using natbib you only need to specify something like

\usepackage[authoryear]{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}

You can read its full documentation by typing texdoc natbib on a command line.