[Tex/LaTex] Elegant way to make entire citation bold

bibliographiesbibtexboldieeetran

Is it possible to make an entire reference appear bold in the references section when using BibTeX? I'm using the IEEE templates and .bst.

I found this related question, but is there a more elegant way to highlight certain entries rather than just adding \textbf{} to every field in my .bib file?

Note that I only want to highlight selected entries from my bilbiography, so changing the whole thing wouldn't accomplish what I'm trying to do.

Unfortunately, I can't use biblatex as \usepackage[style=ieee]{biblatex} differs from what I get using the official IEEE .bst

Best Answer

Assuming numeric citations, here's a way: put the following code in your document preamble.

\usepackage{xparse}
\ExplSyntaxOn

\clist_new:N \g_boldcite_list_clist
\cs_new:Npn \boldcite_checkkey:n #1
 {
  \clist_if_in:NnTF \g_boldcite_list_clist { #1 } { \bfseries } { \mdseries } \boldcite_bibitem:n {#1}
 }
\cs_set_eq:NN \boldcite_bibitem:n \bibitem

\RenewDocumentCommand{\bibitem}{m}
 {
  \boldcite_checkkey:n { #1 }
 }
\NewDocumentCommand{\boldreferences}{m}
 {
  \clist_gput_right:Nn \g_boldcite_list_clist { #1 }
 }
\ExplSyntaxOff

You can then add any number of commands

\boldreferences{key1,key2}

where you list the keys of the references you want to embolden.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Redundancy in bib file: conditionally suppress url if same as doi

The modifications made by urlbst are quite clear, so the change you want is actually not too hard (by BibTeX standards). If you open up your .bst files, you need to search for a function called output.web.refs. It needs modifying to read

FUNCTION {output.web.refs}
{
  new.block
  output.url
  addeprints eprint empty$ not and
    { format.eprint output.nonnull }
    'skip$
  if$
  adddoiresolver doi empty$ not and
    { 
      url empty$
        { format.doi output.nonnull }
        {
          doiurl doi * url =     
            'skip$
            { format.doi output.nonnull }
          if$  
        } 
      if$  
    }
    'skip$
  if$
  addpubmedresolver pubmed empty$ not and
    { format.pubmed output.nonnull }
    'skip$
  if$
}

All that has happened here is that I've added a test for an empty URL and a second for the URL being the same as the DOI once the prefix is added.

[Tex/LaTex] Using references to a .bib file when using IEEEtran

I found that there are two things that I found are necessary to make the IEEEtran class compile:

There needs to be a at least one correct citation in your document one in your bib (in your case, bibi.bib) file.
In the tool chain, you need to compile with LaTeX (or equivalently PdfLaTeX), then once with BibTex, and then twice with LaTeX again to incorporate the bibliography and correct in-text referencing.

If either of these two things is not the case, I also get the same LaTeX Error: Something's wrong--perhaps a missing \item error. Bizarrely, with a single citation it works for me, but after commenting it out it crashes again.

The apparent reason for this is that the IEEEtran class doesn't like empty bibliographies and can't deal with that. I haven't been able to find an underlying reason for that, though, nor a way to fix it.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Redundancy in bib file: conditionally suppress url if same as doi

[Tex/LaTex] Using references to a .bib file when using IEEEtran

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