Updating the List of Publications

We use BibTeX to manage the list of publications for the MBE lab. BibTeX can be used directly in LaTeX documents, and easily imported into any type of reference manager. On berserk Pybliographer is a nice reference manager which uses the BibTeX format. BibTeX can be converted to HTML with the bibtex2html tool.

Edit the BibTeX file

The references are in a BibTeX file on berserk in /home/mbelab/publications. Add journal articles to the file mbelab.bib and theses to the file mbelab-theses.bib. A typical journal article entry looks like this:

@Article{Lavoie1995:Relationship,
  Author         = {Christien Lavoie and Thomas Pinnington and Eric
                   Nodwell and Thomas Tiedje and R. S. Goldman and Karen
                   L. Kavanaugh and J. L. Hutter},
  Title          = {Relationship Between In-Situ Surface Morphology and
                   Strain Relaxation During Growth of {InGaAs} Strained
                   Layers},
  Journal        = {\apl},
  Volume         = 67,
  Number         = 25,
  Pages          = {3744--3746},
  month          = dec,
  url            = {http://www.physics.ubc.ca/mbelab/papers/APL_Lavoie_1995.pdf},
  year           = 1995,
  Abstract = { The relationship between the surface morphology and
    strain relaxation is explored in strained In$_x$Ga$_{1-x}$As
    layers grown on GaAs by molecular beam epitaxy. \emph{In situ}
    light scattering, detected simultaneously along [110] and
    [1$\bar{1}$0], reveals an asymmetric surface roughening which is
    consistent with \emph{ex situ} scanning force
    microscopy. Transmission electron microscopy shows that strain
    relaxation by misfit dislocation formation occurs before the
    surface roughening is detected, for In$_{0.18}$Ga$_{0.82}$As films
    grown at 490°C. },
}

Some comments on the BibTex format:

1. Every entry must have a unique key. I suggest using this format: LastNameDate:FirstTitleWord.
2. There are various formats for author names; the most general is last_name, first_name middle_name. Another possibility which works in most cases is first_name middle_name last_name, but this fails for certain unusual last names, such as those consisting of two words. The actual format in the bibliography depends on the chosen reference style. Put in full names (no abbreviations) if possible, since BibTeX will abbreviate the name if required by the reference style. Separate all author names with the word and.
3. Any letter which must always be capitalized should be placed in curly brackets.
4. Titles should be captialized, but without curly brackets. This indicates to BibTex that the capitalization is dependent on the journal reference format.
5. A range of page numbers is indicated with --, for example 120--125.
6. For accents and other special characters, use LaTeX formatting. Note however that not all LaTeX formatting can be translated into HTML.
7. Do not put month name in brackets, and use 3-letter abbreviations.

The journal names are treated in a special way. I made two files, mbejournals-long.tex and mbejournals-short.tex. There long format file contains macros for the complete unabbreviated journal name, for example

\def \apl {"Applied Physics Letters"}

\def \apl {"Appl. Phys. Lett."}

Generate the HTML files

Just run ./makehtml in /home/mbelab/publications.

In case you want to know, this is a script which first calls bibtex2html to generate the formatted bibliography list, then tacks on some additional HTML stuff around it. If you want to modify the way the page looks, you need to edit the publications-head.html,publications-middle.html and publications-tail.html files. If on the other hand you want to change the way the references are formatted, you need to choose another style (other than amsplain) for the bibtex2html command.

Including a PDF file

You might notice that the above example contains the line

url            = {http://www.physics.ubc.ca/mbelab/papers/APL_Lavoie_1995.pdf}

This refers to a PDF file which will be linked from the bibliography page. It must of course be a valid hyperlink. The easiest way to achieve this is to put your .pdf file in /home/mbelab/publications/papers/. The below step will then ensure that all files in that directory will also be found by the same name under http://www.physics.ubc.ca/mbelab/papers/ with the proper permissions.

Copy the HTML files to physics

Copy the generated HTML files and associated PDF files to physics with the script ./copy_to_physics. This script uses scp to copy the files, and it will ask you for the password for the mbelab account on physics.