Using natbib to control the number of authors printed in a given citation

Question

I am using the natbib with mnras bibstyle to control the citations.

I frequently use \cite{name}, \citep{name} to add a citation. Most of the papers I cite have several authors, so mostly "Doe et al. (2022)" is printed. However, in a particular paper, I want to emphasize the second author as well, namely I would like to cite a paper and print something like "Doe, Smith et al. (2022)", but only for a particular citation.

Is it possible?

Answer 1

Since your use case is limited to a small number of cited pieces, you could make use of natbib's citation aliasing mechanism to generate variant forms of citation call-outs.

\documentclass{article}
\begin{filecontents}[overwrite]{mybib.bib}
@misc{dsjm:3001,
   author = {Doe, Jane and Sandra Smith and Jennifer Jones and Maryjane Mickelson},
   title  = {Collected works},
   year   = 3001,
}
\end{filecontents}

\usepackage[authoryear,round]{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{mnras}
\defcitealias{dsjm:3001}{Doe, Smith et~al.}
\newcommand\mycitet[1]{\citetalias{#1}\ (\citeyear{#1})}

\begin{document}
\noindent
\citet{dsjm:3001}; \mycitet{dsjm:3001}.
\bibliography{mybib}
\end{document}