biblatex cite phd thesis

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How to cite a published phd dissertation in bibtex using @phdthesis.

I have the following entry. But when I cite it in my paper, I keep getting "Unpublished doctoral dissertation" showing up in the entry. As far as I can tell there's no field to specify publishing information, so how do I get rid of this message?

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Guide to Writing Your Thesis in LaTeX

The bibliography and list of references.

The Graduate School requires a Bibliography which includes all the literature cited for the complete thesis or dissertation. Quoting from the Graduate School’s Guidelines for the Format of Theses and Dissertations :

“Every thesis in Standard Format must contain a Bibliography which lists all the sources used or consulted in writing the entire thesis and is placed at the very end of the work. The complete citations are arranged alphabetically by last name of the author. Individual citations are not numbered. No abbreviations in titles of published works will be accepted. The full title of a book, journal, website, proceedings, or any other published work must be italicized or underlined. Citations must follow standards set by the style manual that the student is using. The bibliography for URI theses is not broken into categories.”

The List of References is not required by the Graduate School, but is the style commonly used in Engineering, Mathematics, and many of the Sciences. It consists of a numbered list of the sources used or consulted in writing the thesis in the order that they are referenced in the text. There can be either one List of References for the entire thesis, or a List of References at the end of each chapter.

Both the Bibliography and the List of References will be generated by the urithesis LaTeX class. All you need to do is add information about your sources to the references.bib file, which is a database containing all of the necessary information about the references, then cite the reference in your thesis using the \cite{} command.

Generating the Bibliography and References

The bibliography and list of references are generated by running BibTeX. To generate the bibliography, load the file thesisbib.tex into your editor, then run BibTeX on it.

If each chapter has its own list of references, you will need to run BibTeX on each chapter to update its list of references. If there is one list of references for the whole thesis (because you used the oneref option, you will only need to run BibTeX on the top level file thesis.tex .

How to Add a Bibliography Entry

When we want to refer to a source in the thesis, we place an entry for that source in the file references.bib , then cite the source in the thesis with the \cite{LABEL} command. The syntax for an entry in the references.bib file is of the form:

ENTRYTYPE is the type of bibliographic entry such as Book , Article , or TechReport , that this entry describes. At the end of this page is a list of all possible entry types .

LABEL is a unique string that is used to refer to this entry in the body of the thesis when using the \cite{LABEL} command.

The FIELDNAMEn entries are the fields that describe this entry, (ie. author, title, pages, year, etc.). Each entry type has certain required fields and optional fields. See the list of all entry types for a description of the available fields.

As an example, suppose we have a paper from a conference proceedings that we want to cite. First we make an entry in the our references.bib file of the form:

We then cite this source in the text of our thesis with the command \cite{re:toolan:as03} . This will generate a Bibliography entry that looks something like:

and a List of References entry that looks something like:

Types of List of References

The Graduate School requires that the bibliography is always at the end of the thesis and sorted alphabetically by author, therefore there is no options that affect it. The list of references is optional, therefore there are a few different ways that it can created.

By default a separate list of references appears at the end of each chapter, and are sorted by the order that they are cited in that chapter. The option oneref (see options ) will create a single list of references for the whole thesis, which due to the requirements of the Graduate School, will appear after the last chapter and before any appendices.

The option aparefs will cite references using the APA style, which is the last name of the author and year of publication, such as (Toolan, 2006), instead of the default IEEE style, which is a number, such as [1]. This option will also sort the references alphabetically by author, instead of in order of citation. The options oneref and aparefs can be used together to create a single list of references using the APA style.

Supported Bibliography Entry Types

The following is a list of all the entry types that can be used. Click on the desired type to see a detailed description of how to use that type.

• Article – An article from a journal or magazine
• Book – A book with an explicit publisher
• InBook – A part of a book, such as a chapter or selected page(s)
• InCollection – A part of a book having its own title
• Booklet – Printed and bound works that are not formally published
• Manual – Technical documentation
• InProceedings – An article in a conference proceedings
• Proceedings – The entire proceedings of a conference
• MastersThesis – A Master’s thesis
• PhDThesis – A Ph.D. dissertation
• TechReport – A report published by a school or other institution
• Unpublished – A document that has not been formally published
• Electronic – An internet reference like a web page
• Patent – A patent or patent application
• Periodical – A magazine or journal
• Standard – Formally published standard
• Misc – For use when nothing else fits

Articles that have not yet been published can be handled as a misc type with a note. Sometimes it is desirable to put extra information into the month field such as the day, or additional months. This is accomplished by using the BIBTEX concatenation operator “#“:

Example .bib using this type:

Books may have authors, editors or both. Example .bib using this type:

Inbook is used to reference a part of a book, such as a chapter or selected page(s). The type field can be used to override the word chapter (for which IEEE uses the abbreviation “ch.”) when the book uses parts, sections, etc., instead of chapters

Incollection is used to reference part of a book having its own title. Like book , incollection supports the series, chapter and pages fields. Also, the type field can be used to override the word chapter.

Booklet is used for printed and bound works that are not formally published. A primary difference between booklet and unpublished is that the former is/was distributed by some means. Booklet is rarely used in bibliographies.

Technical documentation is handled by the manual entry type.

References of papers in conference proceedings are handled by the inproceedings or conference entry type. These two types are functionally identical and can be used interchangeably. Example .bib using this type:

It is rare to need to reference an entire conference proceedings, but, if necessary, the proceedings entry type can be used to do so.

Master’s (or minor) theses can be handled with the mastersthesis entry type. The optional type field can be used to override the words “Master’s thesis” if a different designation is desired:

The phdthesis entry type is used for Ph.D. dissertations (major theses). Like mastersthesis , the type field can be used to override the default designation. Example .bib using this type:

Techreport is used for technical reports. The optional type field can be used to override the default designation “Tech. Rep.” Example .bib using this type:

The unpublished entry type is used for documents that have not been formally published. IEEE typically just uses “unpublished” for the required note field.

The electronic entry type is for internet references. IEEE formats electronic references differently by not using italics or quotes and separating fields with periods rather than commas. Also, the date is enclosed within parentheses and is placed closer to the title. This is probably done to emphasize that electronic references may not remain valid on the rapidly changing internet. Note also the liberal use of the howpublished field to describe the form or category of the entries. The organization and address fields may also be used. Example .bib using this type:

The nationality field provides a means to handle patents from different countries

The nationality should be capitalized. The assignee and address (of the assignee) fields are not used, however, they are provided. The type field provides a way to override the “patent” description with other patent related descriptions such as “patent application” or “patent request”:

The periodical entry type is used for journals and magazines.

The standard entry type is used for formally published standards. Alternatively, the misc entry type, along with its howpublished field, can be used to create references of standards.

Misc is the most flexible type and can be used when none of the other entry types are applicable. The howpublished field can be used to describe what exactly (or in what form) the reference is (or appears as). Possible applications include technical-report-like entries that lack an institution, white papers and data sheets.

Additional Comments

Because we are effectively creating multiple bibliographies, (one for the actual bibliography, and one for each list of references), the two LATEX commands \bibliographystyle{} and \bibliography{} are not used. They have been redefined to do nothing, and the equivalent of these commands are done automatically when necessary.

When there is a reference that should be included in the bibliography, but does not need to be explicitly referenced in the thesis, use the \nocite{} command. This command works like the \cite{} command, except it does not put the citation in the list of references, only in the bibliography. The \nocite{} command must appear after the first \newchapter{} command, or it will be ignored.

When using the option aparefs , and a citation does not have an author, (such as often occurs with a web page), the key field can be used to specify what to use in the citation instead of the author’s name.

About the Bibliography Format

The bibliography format used by the urithesis class is based on the IEEE format. See the article “How to Use the IEEEtran BIBTEX Style” by Michael Shell for more details.

• Basic remarks
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Bibliography

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Tips on Writing a Thesis in LaTeX

A typical scientific document contains a number of references, and this leads to the problem of organizing and presentation of the references in the document. The problem can be subdivided into several parts: store of the reference information, later retrieval of this information while preparing the document, and presentation (formatting) of the reference information in the document and in the bibliography according to a particular format.

A widely-used approach to deal with references in LaTeX documents is to employ BibTeX reference management software. In BibTeX reference information is stored in format-independent plain text file(s) (usually with .bib extension), which can be modified with almost any text editor. Such a text file contains BibTeX entries , and each entry, formed by several text lines, has

• unique ID or key , needed to identify and refer to the particular entry, for instance Author2001 ;
• entry type , which can be article , book , thesis , etc.;
• entry fields (such as year , publisher , journal , etc.), corresponding to the particular type.

Here is an example of the article type entry from the .bib file I used while typesetting thesis:

The command \bibliography { reference_list } placed before \begin { document } is used to specify a plain text input file ( reference_list.bib here) containing information on references.

References can be "cited" during editing the LaTeX document using, for example, \cite { key } command, and later at the document compilation step LaTeX input files must be processed with LaTeX and BibTeX .

The most popular approaches to indicate a reference appearing in the text can be classified as "numeric" and "author–year". The former uses sequential number of a reference in the document

while "author–year" is based on the extended reference information and may appear like this:

Each indication has particular advantages and drawbacks. For example, numeric is more compact (i.e., require less space in a text line), and a group of references can be "compressed" into a range in the case they have sequential numbering (i.e., [1,2,3,5] will be shown as [1–3,5]). On the other hand, author–year indication shows more information on the cited document (typically, first one or two author names, and a year of a publication), but requires more space compared to the numeric one. The space consumed by reference may become important if your document has high density of references (and you care about in-line space "wasted" by references :).

In my thesis I have decided to use "numeric" indication, but contrary to the example above reference numbers appear in the text as a footnote: reference number by itself has script size ,

and each number has associated script-sized text at the bottom of the page (where the reference appeared) containing extended information on the cited reference:

This citation scheme improves in-line space saving compared to the plain numeric indication due to the reduced size of numbers, and at the same time allows the reader to see what exactly was cited without looking in the bibliography (which is typically located at the end of a document or chapter). The drawback of the footnote citation scheme follows from the space consumed at the bottom of the page: if there are too many citations on the page, footnote text will occupy a lot of space. For example:

To create citations in my thesis, I employed the biblatex package, which is one of the most notable packages I have used with LaTeX. The package provides a highly customizable interface for the creation and edit of the presentation of bibliographic data in the document. Compared to the plain BibTeX, biblatex enables relatively easy customization of the appearance of bibliographic data. Below I provide customizations I used to modify the default biblatex output. The detailed description of the biblatex commands is available in the package documentation .

The two basic commands to enable biblatex and output citation list are

While preparing the thesis I activated biblatex with the following options compiling the document using biblatex with the options below will need custom-numeric-comp.bbx and custom-numeric-comp.cbx files (see next sections, "Biblatex customization" and "Footnote citation") :

Option hyperref=true was specified to transform various citation elements (like citation number, page number where citation appears, hyperlink to the web page where cited document can be found, etc.) into clickable hyperlinks. This option requires hyperref package (see also notes on hyperref ).

With options url=false,isbn=false I disabled printing the URLs and ISBNs in the bibliography.

Back references

Option backref=true enables generation of the back references to the citation, which are usually number(s) of the page where citation appears:

The back reference text preceding the page number ("see p.") can be modified using the following command:

Just a note on the back references. When you are reading a .pdf document, encounter a reference, and click on it, .pdf viewer will change view to the record of this reference in the bibliography. Now, if you want to return to the main text and continue reading, you may find it difficult to do using back reference when the reference was cited on several pages (back reference will contain several page numbers and you have to bear in mind the original page number you came to the bibliography), and a good solution here is to use " Alt + ← " instead of the back reference itself. On the other hand, back references are useful to indicate how often and where a particular reference was cited in the document.

Citation style

Option style=custom-numeric-comp determines the citation style. As seen from its name, the chosen citation style uses numbers ( numeric ) to indicate citations in text, and consequent numbers are compressed ( comp ) into a range: [1,2,3,5] is printed as [1–3,5]. Above it was mentioned that I used footnote version of the standard biblatex numeric-comp style — as a result, each citation has i) its number typeset as superscript, and ii) short and extended reference information located at the bottom of the page ("footnote text") and in the bibliography, respectively:

Option citereset=chapter defines biblatex behavior for the reference footnote text in a typical situation when a citation appears several times in the document: footnote text for the particular citation is printed only once per document chapter ( citereset=chapter ), where chapter is defined according to the LaTeX sectioning commands . In my thesis a typical chapter includes about 20 pages, and I assumed citereset=chapter to be quite acceptable. However, one of my colleagues was confused by such a rule for printing the footnote text (i.e., he did not get the logic behind the rule until I have explained it). I was thinking about resetting footnote text as "once-per-page" (not "once-per-chapter") but decided to avoid this due to high density of the references in my thesis. If you are interested in such a behavior some useful information can be found here .

Number of displayed author names

Options maxcitenames=3 and maxbibnames=100 limit number of authors of the cited document to be printed in the document body and in the bibliography, respectively. If the number of authors exceeds maxcite(bib)names , the author list is truncated according to biblatex settings, and usually printed as "Author1 et al." In my case I have very short authors lists in the footnote text (document body) to reduce space occupied by footnote citations,

and virtually all authors are displayed in the bibliography:

I note that I have prepared my thesis with biblatex v. 0.9a (19.03.2010), while this on-line document was prepared and tested on biblatex v. 1.6 (29.07.2011). Options maxcitenames and maxbibnames were not available in v. 0.9a, and the described biblatex behavior (with maxcitenames=3 and maxbibnames=100 ) was obtained using maxnames=3 while loading the biblatex package, and maxnames=100 while printing the bibliography, i.e.

The next section continues the discussion of the biblatex customization.

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LaTeX: bibliography per chapter

I am helping a colleague with his PhD thesis and we need to present the bibliography at the end of each chapter.

The question is: does anyone have a minimal working example for this case using latex+bibtex?

The current document structure that we use is the following:

Where main.tex contains packages, document declarations, macros and \include s for each chapter. biblio.bib is the only bibtex file (I think is easier to have all citations in one place).

We have searched and tried with different latex packages, reading and following their documentation. Specifically, bibitems and chapterbib.

bibitems successfully generates bu*.aux files, but when running bibtex for each one of them, an error occurs since there is no \bibdata element in the .aux file.

chapterbib also generates a .aux file, but bibtex finishes with an error caused by using multiple \bibliography{file} in the .tex files (one per chapter).

Some coworkers suggested using a separate bibtex file for each chapter, which could be a problem of maintenance in the future when citing the same publications in different chapters.

We will like to continue having this document structure, if possible. So, if anyone could shed some light to this problem, we will appreciate it.

Update: MWE found Thanks to Habi for the help, here is a working example:

With the document structure mentioned above:

Finally, to generate the document:

• If you'd like to create a working example, I believe this stuff is built in to TeXnicCenter, a windows IDE for TeX documents. –  Greg D Commented May 4, 2010 at 12:46
• chapterbib's issue could be solved by putting a \bibliography in main.tex only, could it not? –  Andrew McGregor Commented May 4, 2010 at 13:16
• 2 I would swear that we've done this before...and after much searching I find stackoverflow.com/questions/2503555/… . Whew. No shame to the OP for not finding that duplicate. –  dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Commented May 4, 2010 at 16:17
• Does this answer your question? Using LaTeX, how can I have a list of references at the end of each section? –  Gert Arnold Commented Jan 11, 2023 at 18:31

That one is a TeX FAQ item :

A separate bibliography for each “chapter” of a document can be provided with the package chapterbib (which comes with a bunch of other good bibliographic things). The package allows you a different bibliography for each \included file (i.e., despite the package’s name, the availability of bibliographies is related to the component source files of the document rather than to the chapters that logically structure the document). [...]

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Guide to BibTeX Type PhdThesis

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BibTeX is a reference management tool that is commonly used in LaTeX documents. The “phdthesis” BibTeX type is used for PhD dissertations or theses. In this guide, we will explain the required and optional fields for the “phdthesis” BibTeX type.

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Required Fields

The “phdthesis” BibTeX type requires the following fields:

• author : The author of the thesis.
• title : The title of the thesis.
• school : The name of the institution that awarded the degree.
• year : The year the degree was awarded.

Optional Fields

In addition to the required fields, the “phdthesis” BibTeX type also has a number of optional fields that can be used to provide additional information. These fields include:

• type : The type of the thesis, such as “PhD thesis” or “Master’s thesis”.
• address : The location of the institution.
• month : The month the thesis was submitted.
• note : Any additional information about the thesis.

Here is an example of how to use the “phdthesis” BibTeX type:

In this example, the BibTeX entry defines a PhD thesis authored by John Smith titled “An Analysis of Example”. The degree was awarded in 2022 by the University of Example, and the thesis was submitted in June in Example City, CA. The type of the thesis is specified as “PhD thesis”, and a note is included that provides a URL for the thesis.

Thesis type not being exported to .bib file

• bwiernik February 5, 2022 Thus is expected. In BibTeX, the “type” of a thesis is implicitly indicated by the item type, either @phdthesis or @masterthesis
• warwickmm February 5, 2022 edited February 5, 2022 Thanks @bwiernik . I've been putting "MS thesis" and "PhD dissertation" in the Zotero Type field. What information is the Type field intended to capture? Is there a way to instruct the export to map a Zotero Thesis entry to @masterthesis ? EDIT: Looks like "MA" or "Masters" gets mapped to @masterthesis . https://forums.zotero.org/discussion/comment/366329/#Comment_366329
• bwiernik February 5, 2022 Yes, “PhD thesis” or “Doctoral dissertation” or “Masters thesis” etc is what you should enter in Type. That will appear if you create citations using a CSL style (like what Zotero’s Word plugin uses, or pandoc/RMarkdown). In CSL, all theses are the same item type (thesis) and the specific type is distinguished by the ‘genre’ variable (the Type field in Zotero). BibTeX uses a different data structure convention. In BibTeX, doctoral and masters theses are two separate item types ( @phdthesis and @mastersthesis ). They are not distinguished by a type field the way they are in CSL. If you are writing a paper in LaTeX, what BetterBibTeX is producing by omitting the Type field after classifying as phdthesis or @mastersthesis is correct. The BibTeX citation style you use should add the relevant labels, etc as needed. Note that if you are writing with Markdown, you should be exporting to Better CSL JSON or Better CSL YAML, not BibTeX.
• emilianoeheyns February 5, 2022 The mapping BBT uses is a heuristic that works as follows: lowercase the Type field, remove any character that is not in the range a-z, remove thesis if it appears at the end, and then map the remainder according to this list: phd: phdthesis, dissertation: phdthesis, phddissertation: phdthesis, doctoraldissertation: phdthesis, ma: mastersthesis, master: mastersthesis, masters: mastersthesis, ba: bathesis, bachelor: bathesis, bachelors: bathesis, cand: candthesis, candidate: candthesis, candidates: candthesis
• warwickmm February 6, 2022 Thanks @bwiernik and @emilianoeheyns . That's exactly what I needed.
• henrex March 9, 2022 I believe Zotero might have been updated? If I write PhD Dissertation in the "type" field, it exports to BibLaTeX as "phddissertation". However, none of the rest of them work, bathesis, mathesis and candthesis. I would suggest that Zotero map the thesis "type" field to the 4 bibtex types: bathesis, mathesis, candthesis and phdthesis, perhaps even by introducing a drop-down menu. Bibtex has other thesis types, such as technical report, etc. that should also work.
• emilianoeheyns March 9, 2022 @henrex using Zotero BibTeX or Better BibTeX?
• henrex March 9, 2022 I use Zotero only. If I write PhD Dissertation in the type field, Zotero exports "phdthesis" in the type field in the bibtex exported file.
• ruiantunes October 11, 2022 I'm having the same issue. zotero 6.0.15 Better BibTeX for Zotero 6.7.24 When exporting the references to the .bib file using "BibLaTeX" or "Better BibLaTeX", the "type" field of theses is being overwritten as follows: "PhD thesis" -> "phdthesis" "Master's thesis" -> "mathesis" "Bachelor's thesis" -> "bathesis"
• adamsmith October 11, 2022 I'm confused -- that sounds like it's working as described above?
• ruiantunes October 11, 2022 Yes, it's the same issue as described above by others. But I think that the Zotero export (for BibLaTeX) should keep the "type" field intact.
• adamsmith October 11, 2022 I disagree -- since an entry in the type field overrides the localized form in BibLaTeX, exporting only the standardized version seems like a much better solution. If you disagree, though, you have access to the Zotero item in BBT post-processing hooks, so you can change this for your export.
• ruiantunes October 11, 2022 edited October 11, 2022 Thank you for your explanation! I agree with you now. My LaTeX problem with referencing theses is solved. Note: my previous issue was that my .bib file output contained "type={{phdthesis}}" instead of "type={phdthesis}" (due to a post-processing script I was using) which was not rendering "PhD thesis" as expected in the list of References.

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BibTeX mastersthesis template

The mastersthesis entry type is intended to be used for a Master's thesis.

Minimal template

Minimal template with required fields only for a BibTeX mastersthesis entry.

Full template

Full template including required and optional fields for a BibTeX mastersthesis entry.

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References after each chapter - CUED PhD Thesis Template

I know it is unorthodox but there's really no way to show what I have done other than the link.

I am writing my thesis using the PhD Thesis Template for Cambridge University Engineering Department (CUED) (v2.3.1) found on Overleaf at my tutor's request and I can't seem to be able to separate the references so that they are after each chapter.

I have tried using natbib with chapterbib as one question here suggested, I have tried using biblatex with refsection=chapter and nothing.

I don't know enough to understand the .cls or other documents that define the kind of document class I am using.

I am calling each reference in the chapter like

I don't know what to do, I have read every question on here and cant seem to make it work.

Edit: Forgot to mention, even though I've tried different ways to get multiple references sections, at the moment I am using biblatex . The references for the first chapter are shown for all the rest of the chapters too, and the references that are not in the .bib of the first chapter are displayed like ?? in the rest of the thesis.

Edit2: A link to a minimal working example in overleaf is here . I know it's not ideal but I cant think of any other way.

• bibliographies

• 1 \bibliographystyle is incompatible with biblatex . If you get ?? for unprocessed references you are not even using biblatex (in which case you would get bold entry keys). Unfortunately the link to the template on Overleaf is not enough. The template offers a great many options and we don't know which you use. Please show us an example document that explains what you are doing ( tex.meta.stackexchange.com/q/228/35864 and tex.meta.stackexchange.com/q/4407/35864 ). –  moewe Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 4:37
• But really, do yourself a favour and avoid that template and all other templates for that matter. At best they needlessly complicate things when you want to change stuff, at worst they contain outdated or outright wrong code that breaks in unexpected places and when you can least afford it. See tex.stackexchange.com/q/390683/35864 . PhDThesisPSnPDF.cls alone in its current form is 1200 lines long and thesis.tex inputs another few hundred lines from Preamble/preamble.tex . –  moewe Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 4:39
• Honestly, I wish I could change templates but I cant, it was my at tutor's request and we are already not in the best of terms. I have sadly made a lot of changes and added things to the preamble. I have edited the post to add the link to a minimal example of what I am working on, only two chapters with enough text to exemplify what is happening. –  M.O. Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 5:03
• The situation with biblatex was more complicated: While you were not actually using the package, that was only due to a weird coincidence. I have added the tag back in and tried to address the issues in my answer. –  moewe Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 6:09

If at all possible you should try to avoid templates in general. See Why should you avoid using (complex) templates? and https://github.com/johannesbottcher/templateConfusion . Most templates are fine while they are working and giving you exactly the output you want, but it can become increasingly complicated to modify them. Bad templates may contain outdated or outright wrong code and may blow up in your face at any moment.

This particular template (Link to the Overleaf version ) is also available on https://github.com/kks32/phd-thesis-template and is intended to be a PhD thesis template for Cambridge University Engineering Department (CUED). If that's not where you will be submitting your thesis, it is probably better not to use that template because you will have to modify it.

I have not had a much closer look at the template than needed for this answer, but I did not see any obvious TeXnical blunders (apart from the counter-intuitive option handling below). My concerns at this moment are mainly conceptual (this template does a lot and is intended for a particular university department) and pedagogical (the code in the template can look frightening, the many options and settings can be overwhelming and even the basic thesis.tex is long and contains many additional \input s, \include s and conditionals).

The class has several bibliography-related options and custombib would hand all control over the bibliography back to you if you had not also used the option numbered . The way these options are handled means that (counter-intuitively) the earlier option numbered just overrides the custombib and loads natbib instead. Note that the class does not care about the order of these bibliography options, the outcome is determined by the particular nesting of tests in the implementation of the class. And the outcome of using conflicting options is not at all clear from the outside.

In Preamble/preamble.tex , specifically with

you try to explicitly load the biblatex package, yet in the next line of code you write

which is a command of traditional BibTeX bibliographies that is incompatible with biblatex (and also slightly incorrect: the style in \bibliographystyle should be given without file extension, \bibliographystyle{aipnum4-1} would be correct).

Be that as it may, the numbered option quashes your attempt to define the bibliography anyway. It just causes natbib to be loaded and ignores your definitions because they are guarded by \ifuseCustomBib (which is false).

In the chapters (e.g. Chapter5/chapter5.tex ) you then produce a bibliography with

which looks wrong on quite a few levels. But again we can take away from this bit of code that you are using traditional BibTeX methods and not biblatex – this time explicitly.

There are several methods to obtain split bibliographies (see Sectioning bibliography by type of referred item ) and there are BibTeX-compatible way to obtain per-chapter bibliographies as well (see References at the end of each chapter and for example How to use chapterbib package: syntax and Bibliography in each chapter ). Yet I believe that biblatex offers the easiest and most convenient way to per-chapter bibliographies.

Have a look at What to do to switch to biblatex? to see what you have to do to switch to biblatex .

Remove all the \bibliographystyle and the \bibliography instructions in the document body.

The following is a "minimal" example using PhDThesisPSnPDF that shows how you could use biblatex in your document. Please read the comments carefully, they should explain how this works.

It seems that in your case the option refsection=chapter produces the error

on Overleaf. This error does not occur on my local installation (MikTeX 2.9 on Win 10 updated this morning) with up to date packages.

The problem seems to be that the definition of \@makechapterhead is botched as \tracingpatches shows

I did not manage to find the culprit (between a completely outdated TeX system with biblatex 3.7, a massively complicated template and a system I have no proper access to that was just too much for now), but you can remove the option refsection=chapter and emulate it by hand with \begin{refsection}...\end{refsection} .

A different workaround would be to issue

directly before you load biblatex .

• Thank you so much for your answer but unfortunately, it doesn't work. biblatex doesn't load either on my pc or overleaf, both ways I get the same errors. I must have a package that is conflicting with it. If you could take a look I'd be so greatefull. The same overleaf link I sent has been updated with the changes you put forward. Again, I know this took a lot of work from you so thank you so much. I feel like I know more things now. –  M.O. Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 12:07
• @M.O. I didn't manage to find the problematic package or definition, but I suggested a work-around. Please see the edit. –  moewe Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 12:42
• I couldn't make either of those work. They both compile without any errors though, but no reference is shown. Would you mind telling me your version of latex and any relevant packages? I am on Ubuntu 17 and I get the same error in my computer than in Overleaf. –  M.O. Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 14:17
• @M.O. Both suggested solutions worked for me in your Overleaf link when I tried them. They also worked on my local installation (up-to-date MikteX 2.9 on Windows 10). What error do you now get on Overleaf? –  moewe Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 14:21
• I am not sure. There's a problem with the second chapter once I actually add the text in. It says Undefined control sequence. \printbibliography[heading=subbibliography]. Already made sure the .bib` file had no non-ASCII characters with grep and I know the problem lies in the bib file because if I comment out \printbibliography then it compiles fine. There are only ASCII characters in my .bib , now at least (before it never had an issue), but it keeps happening. –  M.O. Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 16:21

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PhD thesis template Université Paris Cité

Official University Paris Cité template designed in October 2023 and approved by the Doctoral Thesis Coordination. This model is based on my thesis and has been adapted to meet the University's criteria. This model will soon be published by the Université Paris-Saclay administration on the official website (link to come). No update is planned at this time.

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