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I am having a very strange problem with my .bib file in overleaf.

Some of my citations don't show up in the Works Cited in my rendered paper, even though they are in the .bib file, and are cited in text both with \cite{} and \nocite{}, exactly the same as several other citations which do render correctly.

As I was trying to solve this I noticed that if I change one letter in the first author's name, a particular citation suddenly does render!

The correct citation is :

@article{xia_2017,
    author = {Xide, Xia and Brian, Kulis},
    year = {2017},
    title = {W-Net: A Deep Model for Fully Unsupervised Image Segmentation},
    eprint={1711.08506},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    primaryClass={cs.CV}
}

This is cited in text as \nocite{xia_2017}, but does not show up in the Works Cited and I get a warning saying "Package natbib Warning: Citation `xia_2017' undefined on input line 150"

However, if I change only one letter in the author's name, it works! For instance,

@article{xia_2017,
    author = {Mide, Xia and Brian, Kulis},
    year = {2017},
    title = {W-Net: A Deep Model for Fully Unsupervised Image Segmentation},
    eprint={1711.08506},
    archivePrefix={arXiv},
    primaryClass={cs.CV}
}

Renders correctly with the same call in the body of the text.

What is going on here?

Edit: As an update, this is NOT just this citation. Adding the letter 'M' before the first author's first name causes the citation to render correctly (though misspelled, obviously) for ALL of the citations that are otherwise not rendering.

Edit 2: Below is the text for the minimum .main and .bib files that reproduce this issue.

main.tex:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{abbrvnat}

\title{Example document}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\nocite{Muller_1986}
\nocite{Rieutord_2007}
\nocite{ronneberger_2015_works}
\nocite{ronneberger_2015_fails}
\nocite{Strous_1995}

\bibliography{works_cited}{}

\end{document}

works_cited.bib:

@INPROCEEDINGS{Strous_1995,
       author = {{Strous}, L.~H.},
        title = "{Feature Tracking: Deriving Horizontal Motion and More}",
    booktitle = {Helioseismology},
         year = 1995,
       editor = {{Hoeksema}, J.~T. and {Domingo}, V. and {Fleck}, B. and {Battrick}, Bruce},
       series = {ESA Special Publication},
       volume = {376},
        month = jun,
        pages = {213},
       adsurl = {https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1995ESASP.376b.213S},
      adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

@article{Bovelet_2001,
    author = {Bovelet, B. and Wiehr, E.},
    year = {2001},
    month = {06},
    pages = {13-26},
    title = {A New Algorithm for Pattern Recognition and its Application to Granulation and Limb Faculae},
    volume = {201},
    journal = {Solar Physics},
    doi = {10.1023/A:1010344827952}
}

@article{Muller_1986,
author = {Muller, Richard and Thierry, Roudier},
year = {1986},
month = {09},
pages = {11-26},
title = {Structure of the solar granulation},
volume = {107},
journal = {Solar Physics}
}

@article{ronneberger_2015_works,
      title={U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation}, 
      author={MRonneberger, Olaf and Fischer, Philipp and Brox, Thomas},
      year={2015},
      eprint={1505.04597},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CV},
      journal = {arXiv}
}

@article{ronneberger_2015_fails,
      title={U-Net: Convolutional Networks for Biomedical Image Segmentation}, 
      author={Ronneberger, Olaf and Fischer, Philipp and Brox, Thomas},
      year={2015},
      eprint={1505.04597},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CV},
      journal = {arXiv}
}

@article{Rieutord_2007,
    doi = {10.1051/0004-6361:20066491},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1051%2F0004-6361%3A20066491},
    year = 2007,
    month = {may},
    publisher = {{EDP} Sciences},
    volume = {471},
    number = {2},
    pages = {687--694},
    author = {M. Rieutord and T. Roudier and S. Roques and C. Ducottet},
    title = {Tracking granules on the Sun{\textquotesingle}s surface  and reconstructing
         velocity fields},
    journal = {Astronomy {\&}amp$\mathsemicolon$ Astrophysics}
}
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  • 1
    provide a small test document where pdflatex, bibtex, pdflatex does not show the correct citation, otherwise it is impossible to debug. All you have said so far is that some code in an unshown document does not work, that is not enough information to allow anyone to help you Commented Dec 7, 2023 at 16:42
  • @DavidCarlisle Sorry this is probably obvious, but how can I add a document to my question? Commented Dec 7, 2023 at 16:50
  • just make a self contained example and add to a code block (or two code blocks, one for a bib file) Commented Dec 7, 2023 at 16:51
  • but first, on overleaf do you have any error (red number error count at top of the view) Commented Dec 7, 2023 at 16:52
  • @DavidCarlisle I have added code blocks with a minimum example to reproduce the issue. Commented Dec 7, 2023 at 16:58

1 Answer 1

1

I get a warning from bibtex: Warning--I didn't find a database entry for "xia_2017" then an error from tex ! Undefined control sequence. <recently read> \mathsemicolon

Also an error from url, so fixing the unrelated errors produces an example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{abbrvnat}
\newcommand\mathsemicolon{;}
\usepackage{url}
\title{Example document}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\nocite{Muller_1986}
\nocite{Rieutord_2007}
\nocite{ronneberger_2015_works}
\nocite{ronneberger_2015_fails}
\nocite{Strous_1995}
\nocite{xia_2017}

\bibliography{works_cited}{}

\end{document}

running pdflatex, bibtex, pdflatex, pdflatex

produces a warning about the undefinined 2017 citation, but both the 2015 citations work as expected:

enter image description here

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  • Sorry, fixed the Xia citation issue, I just accidently left it out of the code above but that was not an issue in the original document. Commented Dec 7, 2023 at 17:19
  • How did you fix the unrelated errors? Commented Dec 7, 2023 at 17:20
  • @Random_Astro_Student as I showed in my modified example, I defined \mathsemicolon (to be a normal ;) and added url package as you were using \url Commented Dec 7, 2023 at 17:22
  • Wow, that fixed it! That is so incredibly strange. I wish I knew why adding "M" was allowing to it compile, and why fixing unrelated errors fixed it. Commented Dec 7, 2023 at 17:30
  • 3
    @Random_Astro_Student if you have errors you should have shown them in your question and asked about them. the pdf after any error is never intended to be usable, just a debugging aid. After an error tex may or may not get to the end in a good enough state to write the bibliography data and call bibtex, but whether it does or not is more or less by luck. you always need to fix errors before even looking (or asking about) the output Commented Dec 7, 2023 at 17:34

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