[Tex/LaTex] Suppress field using chicago bibliography style

bibtexchicago-stylenatbib

I am using the natbib package and chicago style to create my reference list. Some of the references in the bib file contain a field called "note" which is printed if I use the following:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{natbib}
\begin{document}

\nocite{*}

\bibliographystyle{chicago}
\bibliography{test}

\end{document}

The bib references look like this:

@article{hambrick_influence_1996,
    title = {The Influence of Top Management Team Heterogeneity on Firms' Competitive Moves},
    volume = {41},
    copyright = {Copyright © 1996 Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University},
    issn = {0001-8392},
    url = {http://www.jstor.org/stable/2393871},
    doi = {10.2307/2393871},
    number = {4},
    journal = {Administrative Science Quarterly},
    author = {Hambrick, Donald C. and Cho, Theresa Seung and Chen, {Ming-Jer}},
    month = dec,
    year = {1996},
    note = {{ArticleType:} research-article / Full publication date: Dec., 1996 / Copyright © 1996 Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University},
    pages = {659--684}
}

How do I suppress this "note" field? Another follow-up question: is there a way to suppress the "month" field in the printed reference?

Thanks!

Best Answer

The bibliography style file chicago.bst is quite ancient; according to the header information given in the file, it was last updated in 1992 [!]. If you're stuck with chicago.bst, though, you may want to do the following:

  • Find the file chicago.bst in your file system (likely under ../bibtex/bst/chicago, where .. is the root of the TeX distribution), make a copy and call the new file, say, mychicago.bst.

  • Open mychicago.bst in your favorite text editor

  • Search for the function FUNCTION {output.year.check} (it starts on line 266 in my copy of this file). In this function, replace the line

    { ", " * month * ")" * }
    

    with

    { ")" * }
    

    (I.e., make BibTeX do the same thing whether or not a month field is present in a given entry.)

  • Regarding how (not) to process the contents of a note field (assuming one is present): For this case, I recommend that you go through each of the 12 instances of so of the following two lines

    new.block
    note output
    

    and choose which instances you want to comment out (using %, as usual) and which ones you want to keep. I could imagine you'd want to comment out these instructions for entries of type @article and @book, whereas you may well want to keep them for entries of type @misc and @unpublished.

  • Save the file and update the TeX filename database if necessary. E.g., if you use TeXLive or MacTeX, you could type texhash at a command prompt.

  • Use the bibliography style mychicago from now on.