Citations & Bibliography

How to Add a Bibliography Entry Without Citing It in the Text

Sometimes you need a reference to appear in your bibliography even though you don't cite it directly in the text. This is common for 'Further Reading' sections, comprehensive literature surveys, or when a journal requires listing all consulted sources. LaTeX's \nocite command makes this simple. Bibby AI's bibliography panel shows all entries — both cited and nocited — so you can manage your full reference list easily.

Use \nocite for Specific Entries

Place \nocite{key} anywhere in your document to include a specific entry in the bibliography without a visible in-text citation:

\usepackage[backend=biber, style=numeric]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{references.bib}

\begin{document}

% These appear as normal in-text citations:
As shown by \textcite{smith2024}, the method works well.
Other approaches exist~\parencite{jones2023}.

% These will appear in the bibliography but NOT in the text:
\nocite{brown2022}       % Include this specific uncited entry
\nocite{wilson2021}      % And this one too
\nocite{lee2020, chen2019}  % Multiple keys separated by commas

\printbibliography
\end{document}

% Works the same way with natbib/BibTeX:
\usepackage{natbib}
% ...
\nocite{brown2022}
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\bibliography{references}

Include All Entries with \nocite{*}

Use \nocite{*} to include every entry from your .bib file in the bibliography, regardless of whether it's cited. This is useful for complete publication lists:

\usepackage[backend=biber, style=authoryear]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{references.bib}   % Contains 50 entries
\addbibresource{my-papers.bib}    % Contains 20 entries

\begin{document}

% Only cite a few references in the text:
Our method builds on \textcite{vaswani2017}.

% But include EVERYTHING from all .bib files in the bibliography:
\nocite{*}

\printbibliography
% All 70 entries from both .bib files will appear!

\end{document}

% CAUTION: \nocite{*} includes EVERY entry, even test/dummy entries
% in your .bib file. Clean up your .bib before using this.

Create a Separate 'Further Reading' Section

Use biblatex's category system to separate cited references from uncited 'further reading' entries:

\usepackage[
    backend=biber,
    style=numeric,
    defernumbers=true
]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{references.bib}

% Define a category for further reading entries:
\DeclareBibliographyCategory{furtherreading}
\addtocategory{furtherreading}{brown2022, wilson2021, lee2020}

% Tell biblatex to include these uncited entries:
\nocite{brown2022, wilson2021, lee2020}

\begin{document}

As shown by \textcite{smith2024}, the method is effective.

% Print main bibliography (excluding further reading):
\printbibliography[
    title={References},
    notcategory=furtherreading
]

% Print further reading separately:
\printbibliography[
    title={Further Reading},
    category=furtherreading
]

\end{document}

💡 Tips

•Place \nocite commands near the end of your document, just before \printbibliography, for clarity.
•Be careful with \nocite{*} — it includes everything in your .bib files, including entries you may have added by mistake.
•With biblatex, you can create separate bibliographies for cited and uncited works using the category system.
•Bibby AI highlights nocited entries differently in the reference panel, so you can easily distinguish them from regular citations.

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