Re: org-cite: how to include a cite with no key?

[John Kitchin <jkitchin@andrew.cmu.edu>]

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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
>
>

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