Citations not starting from [1]?

So you’re writing your thesis, and you’ve made very sure to use \bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}, or another style that numbers your citations sequentially throughout your thesis. Of course you would then expect that the first citation in your first chapter is [1], right? Right? So why does it not start from [1] in your own thesis; the first citation is some random number [16] or something??

The most likely cause is that you’ve used a \cite{...} somewhere in your \section, \subsection etc., or in a \caption{...}. So the compiler would see these \cite first when they appear in the table of contents, list of figures and tables: and you would likely see your citations [1], … [16] appearing in those lists.

A quick solution to get around this is to load \usepackage{notoccite} in your preamble: this would ensure that the sequential numbering of citations will not start in \tableofcontents, \listoffigures, \listoftables.

Happy LaTeXing!