[Tex/LaTex] No “and” between author names in bibliography

Question

I use \bibliographystyle{IEEEtran} for a paper and bibtex with entries like the following:

@InProceedings{
author = {Author1, A. and Author2, B. and Author3, C.}
title = {blabla}
..
}

In the references/bibliography this is displayed as A. Author1, B. Author2, **and** C. Author3. I recently saw another paper, in which the and before the last author was omitted. How can I achieve this? Do I have to "hardcode" the string with commas in between?

I would also appreciate smaller spacing, e.g., between abbreviated first names and the last name.

Answer 1

I suggest you proceed as follows:

• Locate the file IEEEtran.bst in your TeX distribution. Make a copy of this file and call the copy, say, IEEEtran-noand.bst. (You are obviously free to choose another name.) Important: Don't edit an original, un-renamed file from the TeX distribution

• Open the file IEEEtran-noand.bst in a text editor. The program you use to edit your .tex files will do fine.

• Inside the file IEEEtran-noand.bst, locate the following line (it should be on line 193):

  FUNCTION {bbl.and}{ "and" }
  

  Change it to

  FUNCTION {bbl.and}{ "" }
  

• Save the file IEEEtran-noand.bst either in the directory where your main tex file is located or in a directory that's searched by BibTeX. If you choose the latter method, be sure to update the filename database of your TeX distribution suitably.

• In your main tex file, change the instruction \bibliographystyle{IEEEtran-noand} to \bibliographystyle{IEEEtran-noand} and perform a full recompile cycle: LaTeX, BibTeX, and LaTeX twice more.

Happy BibTeXing!

A full MWE:

\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{mybib.bib}
@misc{abcd,
 author  = "Anne Author and Brenda Buthor and Carlo Cuthor and Doris Duthor",
 title   = "Thoughts",
 year    = 3001,
}
\end{filecontents}

\documentclass{article}
\bibliographystyle{IEEEtran-noand}

\begin{document}
\cite{abcd}
\bibliography{mybib}
\end{document}