Loading bibtex file in org-mode file

Question

I'm trying to use org-mode to do almost everything. In my scientific writing activity, I would like to sketch a whole paper in an .org file and then export in LaTeX. I don't want to load the .bib bibtex file in the init.el as I could have multiple ones. For now, I've added this at the head of my .org file:

#+BEGIN_SRC elisp
(setq reftex-default-bibliography '("./references.bib"))
#+END_SRC

But I have to execute it manually every time. Is there any way to make it automatic? The optimal would be to have a directive at the beginning of each .org file saying emacs: "ok, now you should load this .bib file". Any hint? Thanks.

Answer 1

Adding a line like the following is enough to tell org-mode which .bib file to consult:

#+BIBLIOGRAPHY: refs plain

refs is the name of the BibTeX file (.bib extension omitted), and plain is the bibliographystyle.

You can then call org-reftex-citation (bound to C-c C-x [ by default) to insert references.

From the documentation:

(org-reftex-citation)

Use reftex-citation to insert a citation into the buffer. This looks for a line like

#+BIBLIOGRAPHY: foo plain option:-d

and derives from it that foo.bib is the bibliography file relevant for this document. It then installs the necessary environment for RefTeX to work in this buffer and calls reftex-citation to insert a citation into the buffer.

Export of such citations to both LaTeX and HTML is handled by the contributed package ox-bibtex by Taru Karttunen.

As the last sentence suggests, you'll need to add

(require 'org)
(require 'ox-bibtex)

to your init-file to make sure references get exported to LaTeX properly. When I set this up for myself, I found that I also needed to customize org-latex-pdf-process in order to make PDF exports work:

(setq org-latex-pdf-process '("texi2dvi -p -b -V %f"))

Addendum

If you don't want to use the default binding for org-reftex-citation, you can set up a custom key binding for it. For example, the following binds org-reftex-citation to the default binding for reftex-citation:

(define-key org-mode-map (kbd "C-c [") 'org-reftex-citation)

Answer 2

It seems that ox-bibtex is not included in the latest org package (8.2.10-34-gc41bbc-elpa). So I searched it online and put into directory /org/lisp/ once downloaded. But I ran into the following error when trying to do an export involving some bibtex.

Symbol's function definition is void: org-element-insert-before

Then I check the file 'org-element.el', of course there is no such function predefined. But why isn't there? The online API document of org-element mentioned it in once.

So I guess currently it is impossible to use RefTeX as the way the document describes unless you are willing to switch to the beta version or some older one. See

Here I share my way to use the beta version

1. git clone git://orgmode.org/org-mode.git

2. Move the folder to ~/.emacs.d/ and name it as org-beta

3. Modify load-path, let the beta version shadow other version, and include the user contribute directory

    (add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "org-beta\\lisp" user-emacs-directory))

    (add-to-list 'load-path (expand-file-name "org-beta\\org-contrib\\lisp" user-emacs-directory))

(optional) you can use make command to compile the source file and build the doc

4. Now you can (require 'ox-bibtex). I prefer to write like this: (eval-after-load 'org (require 'ox-bibtex))

5. In order to generate reference list at the right place, put something like #+BIBLIOGRAPHY: your_bib_lib_name plain option:-d to the end of the org file. More options please refer to the help document in ox-bibtex.el

6. To make the HTML export part work right, you may need the latest bibtex2html, i.e., 1.98. To build it from source, download it from github, and follow the instruction in the 'README' help document.

If you are using windows like me, use Cygwin64 with all the devel packages. Using Cygwin64, cd to the dir of bibtex2html, and type ./configure, wait finish, then type make, wait finish. Now in this dir, you will get bib2bib.exe, bibtex2html.exe and aux2bib. Copy them to some dir in your environment var PATH. Test it by typing bibtex2html in the cmd.

I have to do the above job because I use texlive2014. If you are a miktek user, bibtex2html 1.95 may just work well, which can be easily installed with a windows installer.

7. To make the PDF export part work right, use the following code to initialize your org-mode:

   (setq org-latex-pdf-process
         '("xelatex -shell-escape -interaction nonstopmode -output-directory %o %f"
           "bibtex %b"
           "xelatex -shell-escape -interaction nonstopmode -output-directory %o %f"
           "xelatex -shell-escape -interaction nonstopmode -output-directory %o %f"))
   

It is the 'bibtex' part that does the job. I use the shell escape command for minted package of latex.

Answer 3

For some reasons, using #+BIBLIOGRAPHY: refs plain did not work for me, but, after enabling org-ref:, I can just do:

I can also try to include citation cite:SM20.

bibliographystyle:alpha
bibliography:ref.bib