[Tex/LaTex] IEEEtran BibTeX Style – how to deactivate URLs

bibliographiesbibtexieeetranlinks

I am using the following BibTeX style for my bibliography.

   \bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
   \bibliography{IEEEabrv,references,thesis}

This formats bibliography entries like this:

enter image description here

, including a hyperlink to the web if provided. For brevity, I don't want it to show the URLs. How can I deactivate them?

EDIT: Let me clarify – I want to save space by not showing the URL, although the BibTeX entry for the publication contains a URL.

Best Answer

If you don't want BibTeX to print out the URL field for a given entry even though a URL field is present, you need to edit the bibliography style file -- in the present case, the file IEEEtran.bst -- to disable this printing. Make a copy of the file IEEEtran.bst and call it, say, myIEEEtran.bst. Open the new file in a text editor and search for the function format.url. It should look like this:

FUNCTION {format.url}
{ url empty$
    { "" }
    { this.to.prev.status
      this.status.std
      cap.yes 'status.cap :=
      name.url.prefix " " *
      "\url{" * url * "}" *
      punct.no 'this.status.punct :=
      punct.period 'prev.status.punct :=
      space.normal 'this.status.space :=
      space.normal 'prev.status.space :=
      quote.no 'this.status.quote :=
    }
  if$
}

Replace this function with the following "dummy" function:

FUNCTION {format.url}
{ url empty$
    { "" }
    { "" }
  if$
}

In short, you're telling BibTeX not to print out any information contained in the URL field. Save the file, update the filename database if necessary (e.g., if using TeXLive, type texhash in a command window), and be sure to use the new bibliography style file from now on. Happy TeXing!

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