Tim Ruffing writes: > The thing is: As I said above, chapter.tex already knows that biblatex > is used (because "biblatex" is in the list returned by (TeX-style-list) > when called in chapter.tex). But the real issue is that this > information will simply not be used when the main.tex buffer is checked > in fundamental mode. I assembled a minimal set of files and tried to understand this. The files are attached, just save them in a temp directory, open biblatex-main.tex and hit 'C-c C-n' to parse the file. Now open a new Emacs instance with 'emacs -Q' and eval this in scratch: --8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8--- (progn (package-initialize t) (package-activate 'auctex) ;; Alternatively adjust the path below and eval this if the above ;; doesn't work with Doom-Emacs: ;; (load "~/path/to/auctex/auctex-autoloads.el" nil t t) (setq-default TeX-master nil) (setq TeX-parse-self t) (add-hook 'LaTeX-mode-hook #'reftex-mode) (setq reftex-plug-into-AUCTeX t) ) --8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8--- I admit I have no idea how Doom manages its packages, so you can load auctex-autoloads.el if the package-... functions don't work with Doom. Once done, visit biblatex-sub.tex with this setup. For me, all works as expected and RefTeX finds both databases. This is what I see when I hit 'C-c C-m cite RET . RET':