Tips: How to Add Two Different Bibliography Styles in One Thesis (e.g., Numeric for Datasheets, Alphabetic for Papers)

[FanWu-fan]

If you want to split your bibliography into two sections with different citation styles (e.g., numeric style for datasheets/reference manuals, and alphabetic or author-year style for academic papers), you can achieve this in your thesis using biblatex with the following approach:

1. Use biblatex with advanced options

In your preamble, load biblatex with the labelnumber and defernumbers options:

% BibLaTeX % style=authoryear-icomp
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[
  hyperref=auto,
  mincrossrefs=999,
  backend=biber,
  style=alphabetic,
  labelnumber,
  defernumbers
]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{allpapers.bib}
\addbibresource{datasheets.bib}

% Custom citation format in the text
\renewbibmacro*{cite}{%
  \printtext[bibhyperref]{%
    \printfield{prefixnumber}%
    \ifkeyword{datasheet}  # same as the Tag entries
      {\printfield{labelnumber}}
      {\printfield{labelalpha}\printfield{extraalpha}}}}

Be sure change the run.py as

given_settings = {
  'mainfile':    'thesis.tex',
  'chaptersdir': 'chapters',

  'makebibliography': True,
  'makeindex':        True,
  'makeglossary':     True,
  'makenomenclature': True,

  'usebiblatex':      True, # change it to True
  'biblatexbackend':  'biber', # alternative: bibtex

2. Tag entries by type

Add a keyword to your datasheet or special entries in your datasheets.bib file:

@manual{mydatasheet,
  title = {My Special Device Datasheet},
  year  = {2024},
  keyword = {datasheet}
}

3. Custom bibliography list style for datasheets and Print bibliographies by group

\defbibenvironment{numblist}
  {\list
     {\mkbibbrackets{\printfield{labelnumber}}}
     {\setlength{\labelwidth}{2em}
      \setlength{\leftmargin}{2.5em} # distance between the number to leftmargin
      \setlength{\labelsep}{1em} # distance  between the number to right words
      \setlength{\itemsep}{\bibitemsep}
      \setlength{\parsep}{\bibparsep}}}
  {\endlist}
  {\item}

%Print bibliographies by group
\begin{refcontext}[sorting=nty]
\printbibliography[
  title={Datasheets and Reference Manuals},
  keyword={datasheet},
  resetnumbers=true,
  env=numblist   
]
\end{refcontext}

\begin{refcontext}[sorting=nty]
\printbibliography[
  title={Bibliography},
  notkeyword={datasheet}
]
\end{refcontext}

3. Complie

python run.py