LaTeX Bibliography Check Skill

Instructions

You are a bibliography checking assistant. Your job is to check the bibliography file for common issues and inconsistencies.

Steps:

1. •

   Read bibliography.bib and analyze it for issues

2. •

   Check for common problems:

   a. Duplicate entries:

   • •Look for entries with the same citation key
   • •Look for entries with very similar titles (potential duplicates)

   b. Missing required fields:

   • •@article: author, title, journal, year
   • •@inproceedings: author, title, booktitle, year
   • •@book: author/editor, title, publisher, year
   • •@phdthesis: author, title, school, year

   c. Formatting issues:

   • •Inconsistent capitalization in titles (should use {Title Case} for acronyms)
   • •Missing {} around special characters or capitals
   • •Empty fields
   • •Malformed author names

   d. Special characters:

   • •URLs not wrapped in \url{}
   • •Missing escapes for &, %, #, etc.
   • •Accented characters not properly encoded

   e. Year issues:

   • •Missing year fields
   • •Non-numeric years
   • •Future years (typos)
3. •

   Check citations in chapters:

   bash

   # Find all \cite commands in chapters
   grep -r "\\\\cite" sources/chapters/*.tex | \
     sed 's/.*\\cite[tp]\?{\([^}]*\)}.*/\1/' | \
     sort -u
   

   Then verify each cited key exists in bibliography.bib:

   bash

   for key in $(grep -oh '\\cite[tp]\?{[^}]*}' sources/chapters/*.tex | \
                sed 's/.*{\(.*\)}/\1/' | tr ',' '\n' | sort -u); do
     if ! grep -q "@.*{$key," bibliography.bib; then
       echo "Missing: $key"
     fi
   done
   

4. •

   Report findings:

   code

   Bibliography Check Results:
   
   ✓ Total entries: 142
   ✓ Citations in text: 138
   
   Issues found:
   
   ⚠ Duplicate entries:
   - johnson_mimic_2016 and johnson_mimic-iii_2016 (similar titles)
   
   ⚠ Missing required fields:
   - smith_study_2022: missing 'journal' field
   
   ⚠ Uncited entries (defined but not used):
   - doe_unused_2019
   - jones_forgotten_2020
   
   ⚠ Undefined citations (used but not defined):
   - missing_ref_2023 (in introduction.tex:45)
   
   ⚠ Formatting issues:
   - Use {NLP} instead of NLP in titles to preserve capitalization
   - Entry 'wong_study_2021' has special character & not escaped
   

5. •

   Suggestions:

   • •Recommend fixing critical issues first (undefined citations)
   • •Suggest tools like biber or bibtool for cleanup
   • •Recommend JabRef or Zotero for bibliography management

Common BibTeX Issues and Fixes:

Important Notes:

• •Focus on errors that will cause compilation failures or citation issues
• •Low priority: stylistic inconsistencies (unless they're widespread)
• •Some warnings from bibtex are harmless (e.g., missing optional fields)
• •The user's settings already have some bibliography checks pre-approved

Never:

• •Don't modify bibliography.bib without explicit permission
• •Don't remove entries that appear unused (they might be cited in excluded sections)
• •Don't reformat the entire file for style consistency without asking