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Adjust text citation using R package RefManageR

I am trying to manage a bibliography using the R package RefManageR as follows.

library(RefManageR)
file.name <- system.file("Bib", "RJC.bib", package="RefManageR")
bib <- ReadBib(file.name)

BibOptions(check.entries = FALSE, bib.style = "authoryear", max.names = 1,
           style = "citation", bibpunct = c("(",")","(",")",";",","))

Cite(bib, c("jennings2013bayesian", "ritchie2012novel"))
[1] "(Jennings, et al., 2013; Ritchie, et al., 2012)"

How to adjust the punctuation within the citation so as to get the following desired citation (without comma before et al)?

[1] "(Jennings et al., 2013; Ritchie et al., 2012)"

There seems to be no option available with the bibpunct argument.

Solution

  • You could use a simple regular expression like this:

    , (?=et al\.)
# match a comma, only when it is followed by et al.

    This needs to be replaced by a single space then, see a demo on regex101.com.

    In R:

    ref <- c("(Jennings, et al., 2013; Ritchie, et al., 2012)")
(ref <- gsub(", (?=et al\\.)", " ", ref, perl=TRUE))

    This yields

    [1] "(Jennings et al., 2013; Ritchie et al., 2012)"