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I have encountered a problem when doing multiple citations using BibTeX and the document class IEEEtran in Mac OS X (Version 10.6.8). The desired effect is similar to this:

References [1, 2, 3].

with thin spaces in-between. Instead, I get

References [1], [2], [3].

For more details, see the attached example code. I tried the package cite and it didn't solve the problem. In fact, using cite (without options) produces this

References [1]-[3]

which is not what I want (I don't want compressed citations, which is a different thing, so this is not a duplicate of this question). The [nocompress] option of cite doesn't help either.

This is the example code:

\documentclass[12pt, draftclsnofoot, onecolumn]{IEEEtran}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
%\usepackage{cite}
\begin{document}
\section{Introduction}
References~\cite{ref1, ref2, ref3}.
\bibliography{mybiblio}{}
\bibliographystyle{ieeetr}
\end{document}

And this is the mybiblio file:

@article{ref1,
    Author = {Surname1, N. and Surname2, N. and Surname3, N.},
    Journal = {Test},
    Number = 0,
    Pages = {1-2},
    Title = {Reference title},
    Volume = 0,
    Year = 2016
    }

@article{ref2,
    Author = {Surname1, N. and Surname2, N.},
    Journal = {Test},
    Number = 0,
    Pages = {1-2},
    Title = {Reference2 title},
    Volume = 0,
    Year = 2016
    }

@article{ref3,
    Author = {Surname1, N.},
    Journal = {Test},
    Number = 0,
    Pages = {1-2},
    Title = {Reference3 title},
    Volume = 0,
    Year = 2016
    }

P.S. I can't use natbib package.

|improve this question
3

IEEEtran explicitly defines citations to be separated into distinct [1],[2],[3] rather than the default [1,2,3] when the cite package is used by the \def\citepunct{], [} command which is used by cite. To over-rule this you can just use \def\citepunct{,} to produce [1,2,3] or insert a manual space, i.e. for a small spacing \, after the comma \def\citepunt{,\,} produces the following.

enter image description here

Produced from

\documentclass[12pt, draftclsnofoot, onecolumn]{IEEEtran}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{mybiblio.bib}
@article{ref1,
    Author = {Surname1, N. and Surname2, N. and Surname3, N.},
    Journal = {Test},
    Number = 0,
    Pages = {1-2},
    Title = {Reference title},
    Volume = 0,
    Year = 2016
    }

@article{ref2,
    Author = {Surname1, N. and Surname2, N.},
    Journal = {Test},
    Number = 0,
    Pages = {1-2},
    Title = {Reference2 title},
    Volume = 0,
    Year = 2016
    }

@article{ref3,
    Author = {Surname1, N.},
    Journal = {Test},
    Number = 0,
    Pages = {1-2},
    Title = {Reference3 title},
    Volume = 0,
    Year = 2016
    }
\end{filecontents}

\usepackage[nocompress]{cite}

\def\citepunct{,\,}

\begin{document}
\section{Introduction}
References~\cite{ref1, ref2, ref3}.
\bibliography{mybiblio}
\bibliographystyle{ieeetr}
\end{document}

It may be worth noting that IEEEtran does the same for the compressed citation by defaulting to \def\citedash{]--[} producing [1]--[3] rather than [1--3] which may be the expected result.

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  • 2
    Of course it should probably be noted that IEEEtran do this to make references appear as the IEEE want, so if this is for submission to a journal any such changes will likely be futile. – Dai Bowen Nov 10 '16 at 15:19
  • Hi, I am facing the same problem. Reading your comment I understood that IEEE (when you are using the IEEETran template) wants you to have the references as [1],[2],[3],[4] rather than [1]-[4]. Is that correct? Therefore, is it advised to leave the template as it is? – kalmanIsAGameChanger Oct 3 '18 at 20:05
  • 1
    @kalmanIsAGameChanger yes, the default style of IEEEtran is as intended even if it looks odd. – Dai Bowen Oct 5 '18 at 9:58

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