Bibliographies

LaTeX also provides excellent support for bibliographies through the BibTeX format. This is a separate file format used for storing document details, which you can then cite in your LaTeX document. These records are placed in a file ending in .bib in the following format:

@ARTICLE{shreejith_esl_2013,
  author = {Shreejith, S. and Fahmy, S.A. and Lukasiewycz, M.},
  title = {Reconfigurable Computing in Next-Generation Automotive Networks},
  journal = {IEEE Embedded Systems Letters},
  year = {2013},
  volume = {5},
  pages = {12--15},
  number = {1},
}

The BibTeX format supports different types of records for conferences, journals, manuals, etc. Author names are separated by and and can be written as Firstname Surname or Surname, Firstname. The case of a reference title is not usually preserved. Hence it is important that any acronyms are surrounded with curly braces to preserve capitalisation: title = {How to do everything on {FPGAs}}. The page range should have a double dash in between and no spacing. This ensures LaTeX typesets an en-dash as is required for ranges. Different record types have different sets of fields, some of which are required.

Don't just download a BibTeX reference from a citation database and use it as is. Tidy it up, as often they are messy, e.g., IEEE Xplore provides journal names as follows: journal={Industrial Electronics, IEEE Transactions on} which is incorrect.

Numerous tools can export in BibTeX format, and some are designed specifically for working with BibTeX files, e.g. BibDesk (Mac), JabRef (cross-platform).

Once I have a BibTeX file ready, I can link to it within my LaTeX file by adding:

\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{filename}

This is placed as the last thing before \end{document} so the bibliography appears at the end. (Note that the .bib extension is omitted). Multiple .bib files can be referenced by separating them with commas.

I can now refer to any document in that file using \cite{paper_label}. LaTeX will automatically number the citation, place it in square brackets, and print the reference details in the bibliography section at the end. The numbering, and how the references appear is all determined by the style selected using \bibliographystyle{}.

There are various built-in styles: plain sorts the reference list in author name order, then uses the resulting order for numerical references. unsrt keeps the reference list in the order in which they are cited in the text; this is more common in our fields. abbrv will shorten author names to use just the initials. Many journals and conferences provide styles that are to be used, e.g. IEEEbst for IEEE publications.

Only references I cite in the document are placed in the bibliography. This means you can have a large file with all your references and not worry about extras appearing in your document that uses the file.

Exercise
Create a new LaTeX file using one of the existing templates and cite some of the references in fpga.bib in the text to see how the bibliography is done. Try changing the bibliography style.