[Tex/LaTex] Proper usage of biblatex-ieee BibLaTeX style in an IEEEtran document

biblatexbibtexieee-styleieeetran

The package biblatex-ieee provides a style for BibLaTeX which follows the guidelines of the IEEE (citations are numeric and unsorted).
Unlike the IEEEtran.bst file, it provides only the bibliographic style, and not the text formatting of the bibliography section.

What happens is that with BibLaTeX the font size of the References section is the same of the other regular sections.
It should be smaller, instead.

In other words, if I use the BibTeX approach

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

I get both the proper bibliographic style and text formatting (smaller font size).

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With the BibLaTeX approach instead, the font size is bigger:

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Therefore, I have to format the bibliography text by myself, with something like

\usepackage[style=ieee]{biblatex}
\addbibresource{references}
[...]

\renewcommand*{\bibfont}{\footnotesize}
\printbibliography

Which is the right fontsize (that is, the second argument for \renewcommand*) to be used with the IEEEtran class?
(and, by the way, why cannot a BibLaTeX syle specify the text formatting, too?)

As a reference:

Best Answer

A quick look into IEEEtran.cls reveals that the definition of thebibliography contains \footnotesize. Since IEEEtran.bst (and many other .bsts) uses thebibliography your bibliography in IEEEtran will be set \footnotesize. If you use biblatex, however, the bibliography is not set in thebibliography. The environment for a biblatex bibliography is defined by biblatex and not the document class.

With

\renewcommand*{\bibfont}{\footnotesize}

You will get the same font size, but a few minor spacing details will still be different.

As to why biblatex-ieee does not automatically set \bibfont to \footnotesize you already got your answer from the developer at https://github.com/josephwright/biblatex-ieee/issues/37. I can follow his argument especially since - as explained above - it is actually the document class that forces the bibliography font size and not the particular .bst style you use. You could argue that in a way it is just because the document class does not fully support biblatex (in the way it supports BibTeX) that you get different output for biblatex and BibTeX.

It should be noted that biblatex-ieee is not actually intended to be used with IEEEtran or other official IEEE document classes. Those classes are mainly (if not exclusively) used for submissions to the IEEE. But on submission to the IEEE you should produce your bibliography as described in the documentation of the document class, which means using one of the provided BibTeX styles. See also https://github.com/josephwright/biblatex-ieee/pull/22 where the developer of biblatex-ieee writes

[biblatex-ieee] should never be used with IEEEtrans. The latter has an official BibTeX style which (like all journal-type submissions) must be used as specified by the publisher. The biblatex-ieee bundle is for users of biblatex who want an IEEE (like) bibliography style. The most obvious use case to me is theses, though grant proposals, book chapters, etc. would also fall into the same potential spectrum.

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