Embed the BIB file in the main TEX manuscript

embed_bib_in_tex.md

When submitting a paper, often publishers do not support including external bibliography files. Bibliography must be converted and included in the manuscript file before the submission.

The following works if you use bibtex to generate the bibliography. Somehow it could be done also with biblatex, but it is more complicated.

1. Let's assume the references are stored in a references.bib file
2. Compile your latex project and get the final version of your pdf manuscript, with all the references included
3. Comment out the \bibliography{references} line that imports the external .bib file
4. Copy the content of the autogenerated references.bbl file right below the commented \bibliography comment
5. To be sure that everything works, remove the temp references.aux file
6. Recompile your latex project and inspect the output pdf file

References:

• https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/25701/bibtex-vs-biber-and-biblatex-vs-natbib
• https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/12175/biblatex-submitting-to-a-journal

I want to share my experience on this case, for avoiding error during compile the Tex file, the references.bbl and references.aux should be deleted before compiling process. Moreover, actually the name *.bbl and *.aux is created during compiling which has the same filename with *.tex filename, not the *.bib one.