Using bibliographies on Overleaf
Introduction
It's possible to include references in Overleaf using all of LaTeX's major bibliography management programs: biblatex, natbib and bibtex. This article explains how to:
- manually create a new
.bib
file for storing your bibliography database - upload an existing
.bib
file into your Overleaf project - create a
.bib
file starting from an Overleaf template.
Note: Users with a paid account can access premium features that allow them to link Mendeley, Zotero, and Papers to their Overleaf account. By connecting these reference managers, you can easily create .bib
files by bulk-importing reference libraries or using advanced search to find and import individual references.
Creating your bibliography database
To create a new bibliography file in your Overleaf project, in the editor, click New File icon:
An input box will appear for you to set the name of the new file. The file should have the .bib
extension, in this example it is called mybibliography.bib
. Now click on Create.
A new file will be listed in the left panel, click it to edit its contents. Add your bibliography entries there.
Now you can import this .bib
file in the main .tex
file. See the next example.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[
backend=biber,
style=alphabetic,
sorting=ynt
]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{mybibliography.bib}
\title{Bibliography management: \texttt{biblatex} package}
\author{Share\LaTeX}
\date{ }
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\section{First section}
Using \texttt{biblatex} you can display bibliography divided into sections,
depending of citation type.
Let's cite! The Einstein's journal paper \cite{einstein} and the Dirac's
book \cite{dirac} are physics related items.
Next, \textit{The \LaTeX\ Companion} book \cite{latexcompanion}, the
Donald Knuth's website \cite{knuthwebsite}, \textit{The Comprehensive
Tex Archive Network} (CTAN) \cite{ctan} are \LaTeX\ related items; but
the others Donald Knuth's items \cite{knuth-fa,knuth-acp} are dedicated
to programming.
\medskip
\printbibliography
\end{document}
The command \addbibresource{mybibliography.bib}
adds the created bibliography file to the document so you can use those references. See Bibliography management in LaTeX for more information about bibliography management.
Uploading your bibliography database
If you already have a bibliography file that you need to use in a Overleaf project, you can upload it. Click the Upload icon located on top of the left panel.
A dialog box will appear, you can either drag and drop the .bib
file(s), or choose select from your computer to upload file(s) from your device.
Once the upload process is finished you can include the .bib
file in your main .tex
document.
Using a template
The Overleaf Gallery provides a large collection of templates, including several bibliography-related templates:
For example, a Gallery search lists the entry Multiple bibliographies with bibunits which shows how to create multiple bibliographies/reference lists in the same document:
If you select "Open as Template" Overleaf will create a new project which you can modify and use as a basis for your work:
Supported bibliography packages
For more information about bibliography management in LaTeX see.