[Tex/LaTex] Natbib and website citation

bibtexnatbib

I am using the Natbib package and using the apalike style. However, I cannot get the website citation to work as planned. I do know of the option of BibLatex, however, I do not want to use that as I'm relatively new to Latex. I have found suggestions that I use the @Misc entry, but that does not italicize the title of the website, which is what I need.

The best example I could find regarding Natbib and website citations was the following:

@Misc{Tho98w,
Author = "Len Thomas",
Title = "Statistical power analysis software",
Note = "http://www.forestry.ubc.ca/conservation/power/",
year = 1998
}

However, there are two problems with this entry. (1) the "Statistical power analysis software" is not in italics and it does not have an "accessed [date]" field, which is required.

In summary, I'd like my citation to look like the following (written in Word):

Department of Basic Education. (2010). Education Statistics in South Africa, 2009.
Available: http://www.education.gov.za/emis/emisweb/09Stats/DoE%20Statistics%20in%20South%20Africa%202009.pdf
[Accessed 16 April]

Best Answer

Note that it is not the natbib package per se that determines the "look and feel" of the entries in the reference section; instead, this is determined by the bibliography style that's in use. The apalike bibliography style is more than twenty years old and thus predates the use of entities such as websites. In order to (i) properly reference a webpage with URL information using this bibliography style and (ii) italicize the contents of the title field, you'll have to set up your bib entry along the following lines:

@Misc{Tho98w,
  Author = "Len Thomas",
  Title  = "\emph{Statistical power analysis software}",
  Note   = "\url{http://www.forestry.ubc.ca/conservation/power/}
           [Accessed: Whenever]",
  year = 1998,
}

Note that you'll also need to load either the url or the hyperref package (in the main .tex file) in order to inform LaTeX what to do with the instruction \url.