[Tex/LaTex] Why aren’t double curly braces around the title field of a bib entry preserving capitalization

biblatexcapitalization

I have stumbled upon a peculiar situation in one of my latest documents: even though all titles in the BibTeX file are surrounded by double curly braces (all the way from the beginning to the end, which is Mendeley's default behavior), the ieee bibliography style still manages to override that with sentence capitalization.

Here is one of the entries, exported from Mendeley:

@article{huang2011short,
author = {Huang, H K},
doi = {10.1016/j.ejrad.2010.05.007},
issn = {1872-7727},
journal = {European journal of radiology},
keywords = {20th Century,21st Century,Financing,Government,Government Agencies,Government Agencies: history,Government: history,History,Humans,Medical Informatics,Medical Informatics: history,Radiology Information Systems,Radiology Information Systems: history,United States},
month = may,
number = {2},
pages = {163--76},
pmid = {21440396},
title = {{Short history of PACS. Part I: USA.}},
url = {http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0720048X1000207X},
volume = {78},
year = {2011}
}

And a minimal version of my document.

\documentclass[a4paper,11pt]{memoir}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{url}
\usepackage[backend=bibtex8,style=ieee]{biblatex}
\usepackage{textpos}
\usepackage{glossaries}
\usepackage{acronym}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage[protrusion=true,expansion=true]{microtype}

\bibliography{../bib/library.bib}

\begin{document}
  \mainmatter
  \include{./matter}
  \printbibliography
\end{document}

I am using a custom command in TeXstudio that cleans auxiliary files, builds "matter.tex" from other sources and then performs "Build & View" on the main document. The outcome is just as if there were single curly braces around the title:

Outcome of compilation

There happens to be a question with a similar symptom, but it was left unattended from both ends (and I am not using JabRef). All my other search efforts on this matter only show when to use additional pairs of curly braces where we wish to preserve all capitalization, which is supposed to already happen at this point. What should I do to fix this?

Best Answer

The double braces don't provide the required protection. Use

title = {Short history of {PACS}. {Part} {I}: {USA}.},

enter image description here

I believe that Biber is removing a pair of braces around the entire field, assuming that it was added by some software that's trying to be too smart. Capitalization of titles should be left to the bibliographic style, not forced. If the external software such as Mendeley or Web of Science is not able to put braces where necessary for maintaining correct capitalization where needed, it's a problem of that software. Checking items for correctness should never be overlooked.

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