[Tex/LaTex] BibTeX URL problem

bibtex

I have two questions/problems for which I couldn't find any solution:

1) For some reason, I cannot use the same code for these two internet sources:

@misc{EvansHBR,
author = {Evans, David S. and Schmalensee, R.},
title = {Why Winner-Takes-All Thinking Doesn't Apply to the Platform Economy},
howpublished = {https://hbr.org/2016/05/why-winner-takes-all-thinking-doesnt-apply-to-silicon-valley},
year = {2016},
note = {[2016.11.03]}

and

@misc{EC1,
author = {{European Commission}},
title = {Prohibition Decision (Art. 101 Ex 81)},
howpublished = {\url{http://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/cases/dec_docs/34579/34579_1889_2.pdf}},
year = {2007},
note = {[2016.12.15]}

Notice how the second one has \url in howpublished. When I try to remove it (and the appropriate { and }), I get this error:
enter image description here

If possible, I would like to remove the URL from all my internet sources, as this makes the text stand out in a way which I don't like. Any ideas what is causing this error?

This is what I use:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage{natbib,setspace,amsmath,graphicx,float}
\usepackage{url}
\usepackage{changepage}
\usepackage{natbib}
\usepackage{times} 
\onehalfspacing

\begin{document}
\bibliography{sqwg2}
\bibliographystyle{apalike}
\end{document}

And here the .bib file.

Best Answer

You shouldn't have bare URLs lying round in your document. URLs may contains special characters that cause problems for TeX. Your first example URL is fine, but the second one contains _ which is special for TeX.

So with your bibliography style and the howpublished field you definitely need the \url{...} (from the url package) in the second example, and you should have it in the first example as well.

@misc{EvansHBR,
  author       = {Evans, David S. and Schmalensee, R.},
  title        = {Why Winner-Takes-All Thinking Doesn't Apply to the Platform Economy},
  year         = {2016},
  howpublished = {\url{https://hbr.org/2016/05/why-winner-takes-all-thinking-doesnt-apply-to-silicon-valley} [{2016-11-03]},
}

@misc{EC1,
  author       = {{European Commission}},
  title        = {Prohibition Decision (Art. 101 Ex 81)},
  year         = {2007},
  howpublished = {\url{http://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/cases/dec_docs/34579/34579_1889_2.pdf} [2016-12-15]},
}

If you were to use biblatex, however, you shouldn't use howpublished for the URL and note for the date of access. biblatex has dedicated fields for URLs, DOIs and the access date: doi, url, urldate, ... Those fields should contain the bare URI without additional markup. In particular there you should not use \url.

@misc{EvansHBR,
  author  = {Evans, David S. and Schmalensee, R.},
  title   = {Why Winner-Takes-All Thinking Doesn't Apply to the Platform Economy},
  year    = {2016},
  url     = {https://hbr.org/2016/05/why-winner-takes-all-thinking-doesnt-apply-to-silicon-valley},
  urldate = {2016-11-03},
}

@misc{EC1,
  author  = {{European Commission}},
  title   = {Prohibition Decision (Art. 101 Ex 81)},
  year    = {2007},
  url     = {http://ec.europa.eu/competition/antitrust/cases/dec_docs/34579/34579_1889_2.pdf},
  urldate = {2016-12-15},
}

If you don't like the typewriter font you get for URLs by default, refer to Why are URLs typeset with monospace fonts by default? and use for example \urlstyle{same}.

Related Question