Is it normal for BibTeX to replace similar author names with "------"?

Question

In my .bib file, I have two entries with exactly the same author names:

@article{Seshadrinathan2010A-Subjective-St,
    Author = {K. Seshadrinathan and R. Soundararajan and A. C. Bovik and L. K. Cormack},
....

@article{Seshadrinathan2009Study-of-Subjec,
    Author = {K. Seshadrinathan and R. Soundararajan and A. C. Bovik and L. K. Cormack},
....

When cited after each other, and typeset with the IEEEtran bibliography style, the .bbl file reads:

bibitem{Seshadrinathan2010A-Subjective-St}
K.~Seshadrinathan, R.~Soundararajan, A.~C. Bovik, and L.~K. Cormack, ``A
  subjective study to evaluate video quality assessment algorithms,''
  emph{SPIE Proceedings Human Vision and Electronic Imaging}, 2010.

bibitem{Seshadrinathan2009Study-of-Subjec}
------, ``Study of subjective and objective quality assessment of video,''
  emph{IEEE Transactions on Image Processing}, 2009.

As you can see, the author names have been replaced with ------. It looks like this in the final PDF:

Is this normal behavior?

Gonzalo Medina · Accepted Answer

The behavior mentioned is the default using IEEEtran.bst style. To change it, you can define a IEEEtranBSTCTL entry in your bib database and change the default value for CTLdash_repeated_names. So, in this case, your entry should look like this:

@IEEEtranBSTCTL{IEEEexample:BSTcontrol,
  CTLdash_repeated_names = "no"
}

Then in the body of your .tex file you have to activate the change by using

bstctlcite{IEEEexample:BSTcontrol}

Example (thanks to Marco):

RequirePackage{filecontents}
begin{filecontents}{jobname.bib}
@IEEEtranBSTCTL{IEEEexample:BSTcontrol,
CTLdash_repeated_names= "no",
}

@article{Seshadrinathan2010A-Subjective-St,
    Author = {K. Seshadrinathan and R. Soundararajan and A. C. Bovik and L. K. Cormack},
    title={foo},
    year={2011},
    journal={bla}
}

@article{Seshadrinathan2009Study-of-Subjec,
    Author = {K. Seshadrinathan and R. Soundararajan and A. C. Bovik and L. K. Cormack},
    title={bar},
    year={2010},
    journal={bla}
}
end{filecontents}

documentclass{IEEEtran}
%usepackage{IEEEtrantools}% only needed if a class different from IEEEtran is used.

begin{document}
bstctlcite{IEEEexample:BSTcontrol}
cite{Seshadrinathan2010A-Subjective-St}

cite{Seshadrinathan2009Study-of-Subjec}

bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
bibliography{jobname}
end{document}

Marco Daniel · Answer

It depends on the bibliography style. This behavior is normal for style IEEEtrans.
Some bibliography styles are illustrated on the page BibTeX Style Examples.
At this point I recommend the package biblatex where you can set this behavior via the dashed option. As answered in this post.
The package itself doesn't provide an IEEEtran style but there is a contrib: biblatex-ieee.

lockstep · Answer

To remove the dash, copy the file IEEEtran.bst, located in /bibtex/bst/IEEEtran of your TeX distribution, to your working directory and rename it to myIEEEtran.bst. In the renamed copy, replace

FUNCTION {default.is.dash.repeated.names} { #1 }

with

FUNCTION {default.is.dash.repeated.names} { #0 }

and compile your .tex document using bibliographystyle{myieeetran}.

EDIT: To the person who downvoted: The original (commented) code in IEEEtran.bst reads

% #0 turns off the "dashification" of repeated (i.e., identical to those
% of the previous entry) names. IEEE normally does this.
% #1 enables
FUNCTION {default.is.dash.repeated.names} { #1 }

so I think the style designer(s) viewed changing #1 to #0 as a valid method of customization.

filipe · Answer

All of these solutions didn't work for me so I found a simple solution: just add  vspace{0mm} to some part of the name of the author and it's OK.

Tavrock · Answer

Repeating @MarcoDaniel,  "It depends on the bibliography style. This bahavior is normal for style IEEEtrans."

If you are writing a paper which asks for IEEEtrans (especially if this is to be published with IEEE), I would seriously consider simply using the default behavior as the result for your paper.  This is not a "fluke" that needs to be programed around, this is exactly how the style is programed and designed to perform.

You should always write your paper and choose your citation style based upon the style guide which has authority over your writing (teacher's choice, university style guide, corporate style guide, Chicago, APA, MLA, AP, &c.) and not your personal preferences.

Semih Yagli · Answer

You can use double curly brackets to override the IEEEtrans style.

Example

@article{Seshadrinathan2010A-Subjective-St,
    Author = {K. Seshadrinathan and R. Soundararajan and A. C. Bovik and L. K. Cormack},

@article{Seshadrinathan2009Study-of-Subjec,
    Author = {{K. Seshadrinathan and R. Soundararajan and A. C. Bovik and L. K. Cormack}},
....

Then whatever you write within {{ }} will appear as you dictated.

Sitra · Answer

For me, the easiest way is to add {} between the author name in the bibtex file!

For example:
author = {{A. R. James and M. E. Xever}},

No need to do anything else, no packages, no editing original files, nothing :)

Is it normal for BibTeX to replace similar author names with "------"?

7 Answers

Example (thanks to Marco):

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