BibTeX

BibTeX was developed by Oren Patashnik around 1988.

See http://www.bibtex.org/Format/ for a link valid in January 2022.

OLDER LINKS: See http://amath.colorado.edu/documentation/LaTeX/reference/faq/bibstyles.html, which also includes examples of how various styles look (e.g, http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~kjt/software/latex/showbst.html, http://amath.colorado.edu/documentation/LaTeX/reference/faq/bibstyles.pdf), in addition to an example and a list of entry types and fields [however, the links to www.tug.org are not valid anymore; see correct links lower in this page].

Here is the rough idea:

Create a regular LaTeX file, with the usual reference to citations via \cite{}.
Instead of the thebibliography enviroment, use the following commmands (with appropriate parameters):
```
    \bibliographystyle{amsalpha}
    \bibliography{REFERENCES-FILE-1,REFERENCES-FILE-2}
  
```
where amsalpha is one of the many bibliography styles (another such style is amsplain; these are the mathematics versions of alpha and plain), and REFERENCES-FILE-1.bib etc. are the BibTeX file(s) where the references are described.
Note: it seems that the file names in \bibliography should be separated only by commas, without spaces.

The entries of a .bib-file are of the sort

  @article {Ruelle79,
    AUTHOR = {Ruelle, David},
     TITLE = {Ergodic theory of differentiable dynamical systems},
   JOURNAL = {Inst. Hautes \'Etudes Sci. Publ. Math.},
  FJOURNAL = {Institut des Hautes \'Etudes Scientifiques. Publications
              Math\'ematiques},
    NUMBER = {50},
      YEAR = {1979},
     PAGES = {27--58},
      ISSN = {0073-8301},
     CODEN = {PMIHA6},
   MRCLASS = {58F18 (58F15 60G99 82A05)},
  MRNUMBER = {MR556581 (81f:58031)},
MRREVIEWER = {L. A. Bunimovich},
}

@book {SV,
    AUTHOR = {Stroock, Daniel W. and Varadhan, S. R. Srinivasa},
     TITLE = {Multidimensional diffusion processes},
    SERIES = {Grundlehren der Mathematischen Wissenschaften [Fundamental
              Principles of Mathematical Sciences]},
    VOLUME = {233},
 PUBLISHER = {Springer-Verlag},
   ADDRESS = {Berlin},
      YEAR = {1979},
     PAGES = {xii+338},
      ISBN = {3-540-90353-4},
   MRCLASS = {60J60},
  MRNUMBER = {MR532498 (81f:60108)},
MRREVIEWER = {A. D. Wentzell (Ventcel{\cprime})},
      NOTE = {Reprinted in 2006},
}

@book {Poincare,
    AUTHOR = {Poincar{\'e}, Henri},
     TITLE = {{\OE}uvres. {T}ome {VI}},
    SERIES = {Les Grands Classiques Gauthier-Villars. [Gauthier-Villars
              Great Classics]},
      NOTE = {G{\'e}om{\'e}trie. Analysis situs (topologie). [Geometry.
              Analysis situs (topology)],
              Reprint of the 1953 edition},
 PUBLISHER = {\'Editions Jacques Gabay},
   ADDRESS = {Sceaux},
      YEAR = {1996},
     PAGES = {v+541},
      ISBN = {2-87647-176-0},
   MRCLASS = {01A75 (14-03 55-03)},
  MRNUMBER = {MR1401792 (98m:01041)},
MRREVIEWER = {J. S. Joel},
}


@ARTICLE{MarRou2009,
   author = {{Marie}, P. and {Rousseau}, J.},
    title = {Recurrence for random dynamical systems},
  journal = {http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.4847},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
   eprint = {0906.4847},
 primaryClass = {math.DS},
 keywords = {Mathematics - Dynamical Systems, 37H (Primary), 37C45, 37B20, 37A25 (Secondary)},
     year = {2009},
    month = {June},
  adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System},
}

@PhdThesis{Schindler,
  author = 	 {Schindler, Tanya},
  title = 	 {Generalized strong laws of large numbers
    for intermediately trimmed sums for non-negative stationary processes},
  school = 	 {Mathematik and Informatik, Universit\u{a}t Bremen},
  year = 	 {2015},
  note = 	 {\texttt{http://elib.suub.uni-bremen.de/edocs/00104900-1.pdf}},
}

@PhdThesis{Kessebohmer,
  author = 	 {Kesseb{\"{o}}hmer, Marc},
  title = 	 {Multifraktale und Asymptotiken grosser Deviationen},
  school = 	 {Georg-August-Universit\"{a}t zu G\"{o}ttingen},
  year = 	 {1999},
  type =         {{PhD} dissertation},
}

The first entry, Ruelle79, SV and Poincare, is the abreviation used in \cite to refer to the publication.

Note that the PhdThesis entry displays its content as "Ph.D. Thesis". Can change that with the type parameter (see the 1999 PhdThesis example above)

Note that characters that MUST be capitalized in the title should be enclosed in curly braces (otherwise, the bibliography style decides the capitalization). Accents (at least in the title and author's name) should also be enclosed in curly braces. See the Poincare entry above.

Everything that is not in one of such a @entrytype{...} construct is ignored. There is also a special @comment entry type.

You can obtain the BibTeX information from MathSciNet. Accents in the author names should be written in a "canonical" form. Multiple authors should be separated by "and".
Remark: many fields can be included in a BibTeX entry. The ones to be printed are determined by the style used.
The AMS-styles print the MathReview number, but probably you do not needed this piece of information. One way to avoid it is to add
@preamble{"\providecommand{\MR}[1]{}"}
at the beginning of your *.bib reference file.

A more advanced approach is to change the style definition, which is in a file named as amsalpha.bst.
To process the files: do latex on the .tex file (to create .aux, which keeps track of the quoted references), then bibtex on the .aux file to create the needed entries (in a .bbl file). Then latex again on the .tex file. [In both commands one can ignore the extension, the correct file will be selected automatically.]
BibTeX will select only the quoted references, and arrange them alphabetically (if the style is such; other styles arrange the entries in the order in which they are cited).
To include other references, use the \nocite{} command; this has the same effect as \cite{}, but it does not appear in the output. To include all entries listed in the .bib-files, use \nocite{*}.
To create the citations in a different format, one only has to change the bibliographystyle.
When all the references are correct, one can copy the content of the .bbl file as bibliography into the .tex file (and remove the BibTeX-related commands). [This way, processing the file does not require anymore the database of BibTeX entries.]

This is a collection of links etc. that you might find useful:

a very basic description

http://www.bibtex.org/

a bit more details

http://artis.imag.fr/~Xavier.Decoret/resources/xdkbibtex/bibtex_summary.html

examples of various BibTeX entries, explaining what the parameters do:

https://verbosus.com/bibtex-style-examples.html

various BibTeX style files (.bst), to dowload if needed

Below is part of the info page for BibTeX. See also the "amsplain" and "amsalpha" styles.

  Here are descriptions of the four standard and four semi-standard basic
  BibTeX styles. `CTAN:/biblio/bibtex' contains these and many more.

  `plain'
  Sorts entries alphabetically, with numeric labels.  Generally
  formatted according to van Leunen's `A Handbook for Scholars'.
  The other style files listed here are based on `plain'.

  `abbrv'
  First names, month names, and journal names are abbreviated.

  `acm'
  Names are printed in small caps.

  `alpha'
  Alphanumeric labels, e.g., `Knu66'.

  `apalike'
  No labels at all; instead, the year appears in parentheses after
  the author.  Use this in conjunction with `apalike.tex' (plain
  TeX) or `apalike.sty' (LaTeX), which also changes the citations in
  the text to be `(AUTHOR, YEAR)'.

  `ieeetr'
  Numeric labels, entries in citation order, IEEE abbreviations,
  article titles in quotes.

  `siam'
  Numeric labels, alphabetic order, `Math. Reviews' abbreviations,
  names in small caps.

  `unsrt'
  Lists entries in citation order, i.e., unsorted.

  `btxbst.doc'
  The template file and documentation for the standard styles.

Last updated: May 2010