bibliographiesbibtexurls
I'm writing a piece whose bibliography with some technical reports, presentation, manuals, and just websites. In the .bib file, I need to decide whether to use 'howpublished' fields, or 'url' fields for the addresses of where these are at
When should I use which of them?
Note: I currently use the abbrv bibliography style, but I'd like a more general answer .
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.
If you use biber, this might be best handled with the related entries feature supported by biblatex 2.0+.
The preamble below defines a new type of related entry: prelim. This key specifies the localization string, formatting directive and bibliography macro used to set the entries given in the related field.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[backend=biber]{biblatex}
\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
\renewcommand*{\relatedpunct}{\addcolon\space}
\renewcommand*{\relateddelim}{\addcomma\space}
\newbibmacro*{related:prelim}[1]{%
\renewcommand*{\newunitpunct}{\addcomma\space}%
\entrydata{#1}{\usebibmacro{doi+eprint+url}}}
\NewBibliographyString{prelim,prelims}
\DefineBibliographyStrings{american}{%
prelim = {Preliminary version},
prelims = {Preliminary versions}}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article{v008a021,
author = {Roy Kasher and Julia Kempe},
title = {Two-Source Extractors Secure Against Quantum Adversaries},
year = {2012},
pages = {461-486},
doi = {10.4086/toc.2012.v008a021},
journal = {Theory of Computing},
volume = {8},
number = {1},
related = {kasher/arxiv,kasher/approx},
relatedtype = {prelim}}
@online{kasher/arxiv,
author = {Kasher, Roy and Kempe, Julia},
title = {Two-Source Extractors Secure Against Quantum Adversaries},
eprinttype = {arxiv},
eprintclass = {quant-ph},
eprint = {1005.0512},
month = may,
year = {2010}}
@inproceedings{kasher/approx,
author = {Kasher, Roy and Kempe, Julia},
title = {Two-source extractors secure against quantum adversaries},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Approximation,
and the 14th International conference on Randomization, and combinatorial
optimization: algorithms and techniques},
series = {APPROX/RANDOM'10},
year = {2010},
venue = {Barcelona, Spain},
pages = {656--669},
url = {http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1886521.1886572},
publisher = {Springer-Verlag},
location = {Berlin, Heidelberg}}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{document}
\cite{v008a021}
\printbibliography
\end{document}
Here biber accesses data for every entry indicated in the related field. Each related entry is assigned a hash key and is marked dataonly. This avoids extraneous entries in the bibliography. It also allows you to cite related works directly and create "circular" relationships between entries.
Since you probably won't be citing preliminary works you could get by without biber, using some additional code to access related entry data and a few more LaTeX/BibTeX runs.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[american]{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage[backend=bibtex,defernumbers]{biblatex}
\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
\DeclareBibliographyCategory{related}
\newrobustcmd*{\getrelated}[1]{%
\nocite{#1}\addtocategory{related}{#1}}
\AtDataInput{%
\iffieldundef{usera}{}{\forcsvfield{\getrelated}{usera}}}
\AtEveryBibitem{%
\iffieldundef{usera}{}{%
\edef\bbxusera{\thefield{usera}}%
\edef\bbxuserb{\thefield{userb}}%
\restorefield{related}{\bbxusera}%
\restorefield{relatedtype}{\bbxuserb}}}
\renewcommand*{\relatedpunct}{\addcolon\space}
\renewcommand*{\relateddelim}{\addcomma\space}
\newbibmacro*{related:prelim}[1]{%
\renewcommand*{\newunitpunct}{\addcomma\space}%
\entrydata{#1}{\usebibmacro{doi+eprint+url}}}
\NewBibliographyString{prelim,prelims}
\DefineBibliographyStrings{american}{%
prelim = {Preliminary version},
prelims = {Preliminary versions}}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@article{v008a021,
author = {Roy Kasher and Julia Kempe},
title = {Two-Source Extractors Secure Against Quantum Adversaries},
year = {2012},
pages = {461-486},
doi = {10.4086/toc.2012.v008a021},
journal = {Theory of Computing},
volume = {8},
number = {1},
usera = {kasher/arxiv,kasher/approx},
userb = {prelim}}
@online{kasher/arxiv,
author = {Kasher, Roy and Kempe, Julia},
title = {Two-Source Extractors Secure Against Quantum Adversaries},
eprinttype = {arxiv},
eprintclass = {quant-ph},
eprint = {1005.0512},
month = may,
year = {2010}}
@inproceedings{kasher/approx,
author = {Kasher, Roy and Kempe, Julia},
title = {Two-source extractors secure against quantum adversaries},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Approximation,
and the 14th International conference on Randomization, and combinatorial
optimization: algorithms and techniques},
series = {APPROX/RANDOM'10},
year = {2010},
venue = {Barcelona, Spain},
pages = {656--669},
url = {http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1886521.1886572},
publisher = {Springer-Verlag},
address = {Berlin, Heidelberg}}
\end{filecontents}
\addbibresource{\jobname.bib}
\begin{document}
\cite{v008a021}
\printbibliography[notcategory=related]
\end{document}
Best Answer
First of all I recommend you to use biblatex since it is very adaptable and processes information greatly!
In the biblatex manual, they are defined as follows:
Thus, I recommend you in general to use the "url" field if you want to add a url to a reference. "Howpublished" would be "internet" or "online" in that case, but negligible, stating the URL shows already that you refer to an online source.
But it also depends on your bibliography style.