# biblatex authoryear with very similar author lists

I'm using biblatex with the authoryear style, and I happen to be citing three papers:

1. Authors A, B, C, D, E, 2009.
2. Authors A, B, C, D, E, 2012.
3. Authors A, B, C, E, D, 2009.

When I cite all three, they're cited as:

1. A et al. (2009)
2. A et al. (2012)
3. A, B, C, E, et al. (2009)

This is a problem, because the citation to paper 1 is not uniquely specified to the reader (though of course the link goes to the right place).

If I remove the citation to paper 2, then 3 is cited the same and 1 becomes A, B, C, D, et al. (2009) – which is correct, if inconvenient.

Is there a way to either:

• Cite 1 as A et al. (2009a) and 3 as A et al. (2009b), which would be somewhat unusual since the author lists aren't actually the same but is probably what I want, or
• Give all the citations as the long versions, which is probably the most "correct" thing but is pretty annoying since it has to show four (long) last names to do it?

MWE with my actual bibtex entries:

\RequirePackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@inproceedings{sriperumbudur:kernel-choice,
author = {Sriperumbudur, Bharath K. and Fukumizu, Kenji and Gretton, Arthur and Lanckriet, Gert R. G. and Schölkopf, Bernhard},
booktitle = {Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems},
pages = {1750--1758},
publisher = {MIT Press},
title = {Kernel choice and classifiability for RKHS embeddings of probability distributions},
volume = {22},
year = {2009}
}

@article{sriperumbudur:ipms,
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
arxivId = {0901.2698},
author = {Sriperumbudur, Bharath K. and Fukumizu, Kenji and Gretton, Arthur and Schölkopf, Bernhard and Lanckriet, Gert R. G.},
eprint = {0901.2698},
title = {On integral probability metrics, $\phi$-divergences and binary classification},
year = {2009}
}

@article{sriperumbudur:ipm-estimation,
author = {Sriperumbudur, Bharath K. and Fukumizu, Kenji and Gretton, Arthur and Schölkopf, Bernhard and Lanckriet, Gert R. G.},
journal = {Electronic Journal of Statistics},
pages = {1550--1599},
title = {On the empirical estimation of integral probability metrics},
volume = {6},
year = {2012}
}
\end{filecontents*}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}

\usepackage[style=authoryear,maxbibnames=10]{biblatex}

\begin{document}
\cite{sriperumbudur:ipms}

\cite{sriperumbudur:ipm-estimation}

\cite{sriperumbudur:kernel-choice}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

• You can set maxnames, minnames, maxcitenames, mincitenames etc. as you wish. Would this work? – cfr Sep 2 '15 at 20:27
• The first option is really wrong in my opinion - not just unusual. An alphabetic suffix after the year is used to distinguish different publications by the same author(s) in the same year. It does not distinguish different authors. – cfr Sep 2 '15 at 20:37
• @cfr, in this case, it's actually the same set of authors, just in a different order, so I'm not really too concerned about it – not as much as I'm concerned about the absurdly long list of authors for the other option, which may actually be enough to convince me to switch to a numeric citation style even though I'd really rather use author-year. – Dougal Sep 2 '15 at 20:42

You could certainly use e.g. maxnames=10 (rather than just maxbibnames=10) to get the full author lists in citations for such entries. (Obviously you could also set maxbibnames=10, maxcitenames=8 or something.)

For example:

\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@inproceedings{sriperumbudur:kernel-choice,
author = {Sriperumbudur, Bharath K. and Fukumizu, Kenji and Gretton, Arthur and Lanckriet, Gert R. G. and Schölkopf, Bernhard},
booktitle = {Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems},
pages = {1750--1758},
publisher = {MIT Press},
title = {Kernel choice and classifiability for RKHS embeddings of probability distributions},
volume = {22},
year = {2009}
}

@article{sriperumbudur:ipms,
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
arxivId = {0901.2698},
author = {Sriperumbudur, Bharath K. and Fukumizu, Kenji and Gretton, Arthur and Schölkopf, Bernhard and Lanckriet, Gert R. G.},
eprint = {0901.2698},
title = {On integral probability metrics, $\phi$-divergences and binary classification},
year = {2009}
}

@article{sriperumbudur:ipm-estimation,
author = {Sriperumbudur, Bharath K. and Fukumizu, Kenji and Gretton, Arthur and Schölkopf, Bernhard and Lanckriet, Gert R. G.},
journal = {Electronic Journal of Statistics},
pages = {1550--1599},
title = {On the empirical estimation of integral probability metrics},
volume = {6},
year = {2012}
}
\end{filecontents*}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[style=authoryear,maxnames=10]{biblatex}

\begin{document}
\cite{sriperumbudur:ipms}

\cite{sriperumbudur:ipm-estimation}

\cite{sriperumbudur:kernel-choice}

\printbibliography
\end{document}


# EDIT 2

One way to limit this effect to just the problem cases is to use the shorthand field to override the default labels for affected entries. For example:

\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@inproceedings{sriperumbudur:kernel-choice,
author = {Sriperumbudur, Bharath K. and Fukumizu, Kenji and Gretton, Arthur and Lanckriet, Gert R. G. and Schölkopf, Bernhard},
booktitle = {Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems},
pages = {1750--1758},
publisher = {MIT Press},
title = {Kernel choice and classifiability for RKHS embeddings of probability distributions},
volume = {22},
year = {2009},
shorthand = {Sriperumbudur, Fukumizu, Gretton, Lanckriet \bibstring{andothers} 2009}
}

@article{sriperumbudur:ipms,
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
arxivId = {0901.2698},
author = {Sriperumbudur, Bharath K. and Fukumizu, Kenji and Gretton, Arthur and Schölkopf, Bernhard and Lanckriet, Gert R. G.},
eprint = {0901.2698},
title = {On integral probability metrics, $\phi$-divergences and binary classification},
year = {2009},
shorthand = {Sriperumbudur, Fukumizu, Gretton, Schölkopf \bibstring{andothers} 2009}
}

@article{sriperumbudur:ipm-estimation,
author = {Sriperumbudur, Bharath K. and Fukumizu, Kenji and Gretton, Arthur and Schölkopf, Bernhard and Lanckriet, Gert R. G.},
journal = {Electronic Journal of Statistics},
pages = {1550--1599},
title = {On the empirical estimation of integral probability metrics},
volume = {6},
year = {2012}
}
\end{filecontents*}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[style=authoryear,maxbibnames=10]{biblatex}

\begin{document}
\cite{sriperumbudur:ipms}

\cite{sriperumbudur:ipm-estimation}

\cite{sriperumbudur:kernel-choice}

\printbibliography
\end{document}


# EDIT 1

Note that I do NOT recommend this. I think alphabetic suffixes should be used for disambiguation only when the author/author list is the same for two different publications from the same year. Using them to distinguish a case where the author lists differ - even if only in ordering - is a misuse, in my opinion, and confusing. (Note that two items disambiguated in this way would normally appear grouped together in the bibliography. Here, of course, that is not the case.)

If you really want the first, non-standard option, you can just specify the year field to override the default label:

\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@inproceedings{sriperumbudur:kernel-choice,
author = {Sriperumbudur, Bharath K. and Fukumizu, Kenji and Gretton, Arthur and Lanckriet, Gert R. G. and Schölkopf, Bernhard},
booktitle = {Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems},
pages = {1750--1758},
publisher = {MIT Press},
title = {Kernel choice and classifiability for RKHS embeddings of probability distributions},
volume = {22},
year = {2009b},
}

@article{sriperumbudur:ipms,
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
arxivId = {0901.2698},
author = {Sriperumbudur, Bharath K. and Fukumizu, Kenji and Gretton, Arthur and Schölkopf, Bernhard and Lanckriet, Gert R. G.},
eprint = {0901.2698},
title = {On integral probability metrics, $\phi$-divergences and binary classification},
year = {2009a},
}

@article{sriperumbudur:ipm-estimation,
author = {Sriperumbudur, Bharath K. and Fukumizu, Kenji and Gretton, Arthur and Schölkopf, Bernhard and Lanckriet, Gert R. G.},
journal = {Electronic Journal of Statistics},
pages = {1550--1599},
title = {On the empirical estimation of integral probability metrics},
volume = {6},
year = {2012}
}
\end{filecontents*}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[style=authoryear,maxbibnames=10]{biblatex}

\begin{document}
\cite{sriperumbudur:ipms}

\cite{sriperumbudur:ipm-estimation}

\cite{sriperumbudur:kernel-choice}

\printbibliography
\end{document}


• Unfortunately, this will also make all the other citations in my document quite long as well, even those which are unambiguous with a shorter list – I'd really rather not do that. – Dougal Sep 2 '15 at 20:43
• @Dougal See edit. I don't recommend this method, though. I think you should either use longer lists of names or switch to a different labelling style. – cfr Sep 2 '15 at 22:14
• Hmm. I think if I were to do this, I'd want paper 3 to be just "A et al. 2009b". I suppose if I set maxbibnames to 3 I'd probably get that, though that's really not ideal either. Blegh. – Dougal Sep 2 '15 at 22:18
• @Dougal I've added another option which using the shorthand field rather than abusing year. With this, you can determine the label you want for a particular entry without affecting others and without affecting the entry in the bibliography. I suspect this is really the best option even if it involves longer labels for one or two entries in the text. (That is, the option is likely to make much more sense to your readers while not cluttering the document excessively with long labels in citations.) – cfr Sep 2 '15 at 22:21
• Ah, yes, edit 2 is perfect. Thanks! – Dougal Sep 2 '15 at 22:23