could not find bibliography file: citations.bib in r shiny

Question

I'm having trouble with rmarkdown::render() recognizing a .bib file. I've tried putting it in the www file and also the directory from which the app is run with no success. I've had success locally by adding /users/blah/blah/citations.bib but when deploying this workaround it doesn't work (as it shouldn't). I've also looked into this Bibliography not working when rendering a R Markdown document within an R Shiny App, which works great for static htmls produced prior to deploying; however, my case involves the user creating a unique report while deployed and nullifies this option (I think...). Any suggestions would be much appreciated. Thanks.