URLs in BibTeX bibliographies
There is no citation type for URLs, per se, in the
standard BibTeX styles, though Oren Patashnik (the author of
BibTeX) is believed to be considering developing one such for use
with the long-awaited BibTeX version 1.0.
The actual information that need be available in a citation of an
URL is discussed at some length in the publicly available
on-line
extracts of ISO 690–2;
the techniques below do not satisfy all the requirements of
ISO 690–2, but they offer a solution that is at least
available to users of today’s tools.
Until the new version of BibTeX arrives, the simplest technique is
to use the howpublished field of the standard styles’ @misc
function. Of course, the strictures
about typesetting URLs still apply, so the
entry will look like:
@misc{...,
...,
howpublished = "\url{http://...}"
}
A possible alternative approach is to use BibTeX styles other than
the standard ones, that already have URL entry types.
Candidates are:
- The natbib styles (plainnat,
unsrtnat and abbrevnat), which are extensions of
the standard styles, principally for use with natbib
itself. However, they’ve acquired URLs and other “modern”
entries along the way. The same author’s custom-bib is
also capable of generating styles that honour URL entries.
- The babelbib bundle, which offers
multilingual bibliographies, similarly provides a
set of standard-style equivalents that have URL entries.
- More modern styles such as the harvard package (if the
citation styles are otherwise satisfactory for you).
Harvard bibliography styles all include a “
url”
field in their specification; however, the typesetting offered is
somewhat feeble (though it does recognise and use
LaTeX2HTML macros if they are available, to create
hyperlinks).
You can also acquire new BibTeX styles by use of Norman Gray’s
urlbst system, which is based on a Perl script
that edits an existing BibTeX style file to produce a new
style. The new style thus generated has a webpage entry type, and
also offers support for url and lastchecked fields
in the other entry types. The Perl script comes with a set
of converted versions of the standard bibliography styles.
Another possibility is that some conventionally-published paper,
technical report (or even book) is also available on the Web. In such
cases, a useful technique is something like:
@techreport{...,
...,
note = "Also available as \url{http://...}"
}
There is good reason to use the url or hyperref
packages in this context: BibTeX has a habit of splitting
lines it considers excessively long, and if there are no space
characters for it to use as ‘natural’ breakpoints, BibTeX will
insert a comment (‘%’) character … which
is an acceptable character in an URL. Any current version of the
url or hyperref package detects this
“%–end-of-line” structure in its argument, and
removes it.
- babelbib bundle
- biblio/bibtex/contrib/babelbib (or browse the directory)
- custom-bib bundle
- macros/latex/contrib/custom-bib (or browse the directory)
- harvard.sty
- macros/latex/contrib/harvard (or browse the directory)
- hyperref.sty
- macros/latex/contrib/hyperref (or browse the directory)
- natbib styles
- macros/latex/contrib/natbib (or browse the directory)
- url.sty
- macros/latex/contrib/url (or browse the directory)
- urlbst
- biblio/bibtex/contrib/urlbst (or browse the directory)
This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=citeURL