Putting \citep and \citep* together

Question

I'm using BibTeX and natbib and trying to make a single \citep block where two entries are expanded (i.e. I would cite them individually with \citep*) and one entry is not. That is, the desired effect is

(Marigo et al. 2001; Siess, Livio & Lattanzio 2002)

If I use \citep{marigo+01,siess02}, I'd get

(Marigo et al. 2001; Siess et al. 2002)

and if I use \citep*{marigo+01,siess02}

(Marigo, Girardi, Chiosi & Wood 2001; Siess, Livio & Lattanzio 2002).

If you're wondering why I don't just modify the bibliography style, it's because I'm following the MNRAS style which requires three-author papers are cited in full the first time and as et al. thereafter. For argument's sake, just imagine that the first paper is (Marigo, Girardi & Wood 2001) and I still want to mix the two modes.

I'm not sure if the search function (or Google) really picked up on my use of \citep* rather than \citep so I apologize if this is a duplicate.

Answer 1

The only reasonably straightforward (though kludgy!) solution I can see to the issue you describe is to use the composite instruction

\citetext{\citealp{marigo+01}; \citealp*{siess02}}

The \citetext instruction serves to surround its argument with parentheses. The \citealp and \citealp* instructions, respectively, behave like \citep and \citep* except that they do not surround the resulting text with parentheses.