You ran BibTeX, got no errors, but your PDF has no bibliography. This is maddeningly common. Here are the causes, in order of likelihood.
1. You didn't compile enough times
LaTeX needs 4 passes: pdflatex → bibtex → pdflatex → pdflatex. If you only ran pdflatex once, BibTeX never ran.
2. Wrong .bib filename
% ❌ Don't include the .bib extension with BibTeX
\\bibliography{references.bib}
% ✅ Correct
\\bibliography{references}3. Missing \\bibliographystyle
BibTeX silently does nothing without it:
\\bibliographystyle{plain} % REQUIRED for BibTeX
\\bibliography{references}4. No \\cite commands in your document
BibTeX only includes entries that are cited. Use \\nocite{*} to include all entries without citing them.
5. .bib file has syntax errors
A single missing comma or brace breaks the entire bibliography silently. Check your .blg log file for errors.
6. Citation key mismatch
Keys are case-sensitive: \\cite{Smith2024} won't match @article{smith2024, ...}.
7. Corrupted aux files
Delete all .aux, .bbl, .blg files and recompile from scratch.
8. Mixing BibTeX and biblatex
If you have \\usepackage{biblatex}, you need biber not bibtex, and \\printbibliography not \\bibliography{}. See our natbib vs biblatex guide.
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