On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 7:28 PM Emmanuel Charpentier < emm.charpentier@free.fr> wrote: > > In natbib there is \citetext{priv.\ comm.} which is used to add a > > textual citation to the bibliography that doesn't have a key > > associated with it. > > Hmmm... why should you bother to reference a personal communication ? > Such private communications may be mentionned in the text (possibly by > a footnote) but can't be properly referenced (since there is nothing to > refer to). If you feel that this communication must be referred to, you > should give it some (written) support and (properly) reference this > support. > Who is to say why someone would bother. It is a command on page two of http://tug.ctan.org/macros/latex/contrib/natbib/natnotes.pdf that one can use. It is also possible to use \nocite{*} as a cite, which includes all references from a bibliography, and yet contains no key. Even funnier in a way is \nocite{key} which just adds entries to the bibliography, but does not cite them in the body of a document. Footnotes are not always allowed in publications, and for various reasons not worth defending, in proposals one might want to put this in the references because of space limitations. I count at least 10 examples of such personal communications in the references in my library of ~1800 pdfs, so they aren't very common, but certainly they exist in the wild. Whether people should do it or not, they do. > > ISTR that at least CSL and BibLaTeX have types appropriates for a > manuscript or a letter. You may also consider your own notes as > documents and reference them (properly). > > > I don't see a way to get something like that in org-cite, since it > > seems that a key is always required. > > Indeed : the key is, in relational algebra terms, the primary key of > the bibliographic relation... > I think of it more like a lambda function, but for a cite reference, where you define what you want inline. It is pretty common in scientific papers and proposals to see that. It may not make sense to make an @misc bibtex entry for that purpose, since it is a one time citation for that document, and is like a lambda reference. > > This isn't currently recognized as a cite, but something like this > > seems like a reasonable solution to me. > > > [cite/text:@ private communication] > > Such special casing is probably a bugs' nest... err.. hive. And > pointless, as explained /supra/. > HTH, > > -- > Emmanuel Charpentier > > > John > >