How can I have LaTeX print citations inside of parentheses? - latex

Question

I have a problem with reference style in LaTeX.
I use:
\usepackage[backend=bibtex,style=authoryear]{biblatex} %
But when I look at the references, the text is not inside parentheses.
For example:
,reviewed in Roy et al. 2010
should be
,reviewed in (Roy et al. 2010)

Answer 1

All bibliography package have a mean to either add or not parenthesis to a citation, depending on context.
Indeed, generally it is undesirable to have all citations bracketted.
For instance, if you say "see \cite{foobar}", you probably want "see (Foobar 1999)". But in a phrase like "(\cite{foobar} also has interesting examples)", you do not want parenthesis, as "((Foobar 1999) also ...)" looks ugly and is not advised in standard typographic rules. Probably "(Foobar 1999 also has ...)" is prefered.
For this reason, in vanilla bibtex, you have \cite (without parenthesis) and \citep (with parenthesis).
In biblatex, you can do the same. Instead of using \cite, use \parencite to get citations with parenthesis.

Answer 2

Another approach to add parenthesis around the citations is to change the definition of the \cite macro:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
#book{knuth,
author = {Knuth, Donald E.},
title = {The {\TeX} book},
date = 1984,
maintitle = {Computers \& Typesetting},
volume = {A},
publisher = {Addison-Wesley},
location = {Reading, Mass.},
langid = {english},
langidopts = {variant=american},
sortyear = {1984-1},
sorttitle = {Computers & Typesetting A},
indexsorttitle= {The TeXbook},
indextitle = {\protect\TeX book, The},
shorttitle = {\TeX book}
}
#article{einstein,
author = {Einstein, A.},
title = {Die Grundlage der allgemeinen Relativitätstheorie},
journal = {Annalen der Physik},
volume = {354},
number = {7},
doi = {10.1002/andp.19163540702},
pages = {769--822},
year = {1916}
}
\end{filecontents*}
\usepackage[backend=bibtex,style=authoryear]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\DeclareCiteCommand{\cite}[\mkbibparens]
{\usebibmacro{prenote}}
{\usebibmacro{citeindex}%
\printtext[bibhyperref]{\usebibmacro{cite}}}
{\multicitedelim}
{\usebibmacro{postnote}}
\DeclareCiteCommand*{\cite}[\mkbibparens]
{\usebibmacro{prenote}}
{\usebibmacro{citeindex}%
\printtext[bibhyperref]{\usebibmacro{citeyear}}}
{\multicitedelim}
{\usebibmacro{postnote}}
\begin{document}
\cite{einstein}
\printbibliography
\end{document}