BibTeX: How to reduce long author lists to "Firstauthor et al."?

There should be no need to edit a .bib file manually to have the desired number of authors before 'et al.' in either the citations or the bibliography/reference list.

The number of authors listed in citations and the bibliography is managed by the bibliography style. For example, using the APA style (which requires up to the first six authors before 'et al.' for book references in the bibliography):

sample.tex file:

documentclass{article}
usepackage{apacite}
bibliographystyle{apacite}

begin{document}
Found in cite{abk}.

bibliography{sample}
end{document}

sample.bib file:

@book{abk,
  author    = "A. Man and A. Woman and Second Man and Third Man and Fourth Man and Second Woman and Third Woman and Fourth Woman and Fifth Man",
  title     = "This book",
  publisher = "Men & Women",
  year      = 2025,
}

output (not formatted, just the text from the .pdf)

Found in (Man et al., 2025).

References

Man, A., Woman, A., Man, S., Man, T., Man, F., Woman, S., et al. (2025). This book. Men & Women.

You would need to identify an appropriate style, usually provided by the publisher if they accept contributions produced using (Any)TeX or from the pre-configured styles available, or you could produce your own if the requirement is sufficiently important. If you want suggestions for possible styles it would help if you said which style you are currently using and the changes you want to achieve.

To give an example of a different style using the same sample.bib file but with the bibliography style changed:

documentclass{article}
bibliographystyle{alpha}

begin{document}
Found in cite{abk}.

bibliography{sample}
end{document}

This style produces (again, just the text from the .pdf):

Found in [MWM+ 25].

References

[MWM+ 25] A. Man, A. Woman, Second Man, Third Man, Fourth Man, Second Woman, Third Woman, Fourth Woman, and Fifth Man. This book. Men & Women, 2025.

This does not truncate the number of authors in the bibliography at all (unlike the first example using the APA style).

If you are using BibTeX, place and others after the main authors and the compiled file should show et. al, e.g.:

Author="H. Morgan and others"

You can redo the unsrt style with custom-bib. Copy the following into a file myunsrt.dbj:

input docstrip

preamble
endpreamble

postamble
endpostamble

keepsilent
askforoverwritefalse
defMBopts{from{merlin.mbs}{%
seq-no,% no sorting
nmlm,% limit number of names in bibliography
x5,% maximum number of names to appear
m5,% minimum number of names before et al. is written
}}
generate{file{myunsrt.bst}{MBopts}}
endbatchfile

and then TeX it with

latex myunsrt.dbj

You will get a few subtle differences to unsrt:

• There will be italic correction after italic text
• The note field will have a captilazed first word
• A Ph.D. thesis will appear as "Ph.D. thesis" instead of "PhD thesis"
• Titles of theses will be emphasized, too, like article titles, or book titles
• Address and year will not be part of a book title in an incollection, but part of the incollection item; this changes the order of address, year, and publisher (year will always be last)

In my opinion, those differences are for good. You can change the number of authors that you like to see in the bibliography by changing the m5 and x5 in the dbj file to something else, say m7 and x7.

Like @mico said, a sure way to do this is to create the .bst file with makebst.tex.

For those who use natbib, I created a file on my own with the folloowing features:

• in the list of references, for every entry the list of authors is truncated after the third one
• in a citation, the list of authors is truncated to first author et al. for three or more authors.

The file can be downloaded from this page.

FUNCTION {format.names}
{ 'bibinfo :=
  duplicate$ empty$ 'skip$ {
  's :=
  "" 't :=
  #1 'nameptr :=
  s num.names$ 'numnames :=
  numnames 'namesleft :=
    { namesleft #0 > }
    { s nameptr
      "{f.~}{vv~}{ll}{, jj}"
      format.name$
      bibinfo bibinfo.check
      type$ "presentation" =
        { check.speaker }
        'skip$
      if$
      't :=
      nameptr #1 >
        {
          nameptr #3
          #1 + =
          numnames #3
          > and
            { "others" 't :=
              #1 'namesleft := }
            'skip$
          if$
          namesleft #1 >
            { ", " * t * }
            {
              s nameptr "{ll}" format.name$ duplicate$ "others" =
                { 't := }
                { pop$ }
              if$
              t "others" =
                {
                  " " * bbl.etal *
                }
                {
                  bbl.and
                  space.word * t *
                }
              if$
            }
          if$
        }
        't
      if$
      nameptr #1 + 'nameptr :=
      namesleft #1 - 'namesleft :=
    }
  while$
  } if$
}

You can use abntex2-num or abntex2-alf as style. If you don't have it install the TexLive texlive-bibtex-extra package.

http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/abntex2

Some journals like Neuron only want an et al. in the Reference list after 10 authors have been listed. Helps to be able to paste this code over the relevant section of your .bst file rather than having to go through the whole makebst thing. I think the following achieves this:

FUNCTION {format.names}
{ 'bibinfo :=
  duplicate$ empty$ 'skip$ {
  's :=
  "" 't :=
  #1 'nameptr :=
  s num.names$ 'numnames :=
  numnames 'namesleft :=
    { namesleft #0 > }
    { s nameptr
      "{f.~}{vv~}{ll}{, jj}"
      format.name$
      bibinfo bibinfo.check
      't :=
      nameptr #1 >
        {
          nameptr #10
          #1 + =
          numnames #10
          > and
            { "others" 't :=
              #1 'namesleft := }
            'skip$
          if$
          namesleft #1 >
            { ", " * t * }
            {
              s nameptr "{ll}" format.name$ duplicate$ "others" =
                { 't := }
                { pop$ }
              if$
              numnames #2 >
                { "," * }
                'skip$
              if$
              t "others" =
                {
                  " " * bbl.etal *
                }
                {
                  bbl.and
                  space.word * t *
                }
              if$
            }
          if$
        }
        't
      if$
      nameptr #1 + 'nameptr :=
      namesleft #1 - 'namesleft :=
    }
  while$
  } if$
}

Too complex and you usually do not have time to struggle with this sort of things.

Just go to your bibtex file and in the authors tag, keep the first name, delete the rest and write "and others", compile and you will be done.

You can use the unsrt2authabbrvpp.bst to abbreviate author names and to reduce the author's list using "et al.". You don't have to change anything in the bib file. I have tested it with only IEEE template.

Download it from here: https://gitlab.com/tanwirahmad/ieee-abrv-names

You can use natbibapa with apacite, but it returns the long name in the first citation by default.

To change this you have to give the bibtexkey of your references with more than 3 author before the citation as follow:

usepackage[natbibapa]{apacite}
shortcites{bibtexkey1, bibtexkey2,...} %before the citations

begin{document}

citep{bibtexkey1}

bibliography{Mybibliography}
end{document}

It was the simplest way I found to get together natbib, APA style and short citation names.

Note: in the references, all the names are printed as APA style requires

Remove all the authors whom you want to replace with et al. Then add and others suffix to the author field.

e.g. Code segment in .bib file

@ARTICLE{hao,
author={Hao, M. and Bai, Y. and Zeiske, S. and others},
journal={Nature Energy},
title={Ligand-assisted cation-exchange engineering for high-efficiency colloidal Cs1−xFAxPbI3 quantum dot solar cells with reduced phase segregation},
year={2020},
month={Jan.},
volume={5},
number={},
pages={79–88},
keywords={},
doi={10.1038/s41560-019-0535-7},
ISSN={}
}

Output:

[2] M. Hao, Y. Bai, S. Zeiske, et al., “Ligand-assisted cation-exchange engineering for high-efficiency colloidalcs1xfaxpbi3 quantum dot solar cells with reduced phase segregation,” Nature Energy, vol. 5, p. 79–88, Jan. 2020.