BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ Modify bst file

[waschbaer]

Hi @all

I have wasted the entire day today to format my bibliography using makebst to get it into the format the journal I am submitting the paper to wants it. However, I don't know how to solve the following: The bst file is set to put a period at the end of each reference. For article that would be after the page number in my case. However, my journal wants the DOI if available to appear after the page number, but then the page numbers should have a comma instead of the period.

Any ideas where to add this?

Cheers
Martin

[frabjous]

I guess the reference people typically give for modifying bst files is the tametheBeaST document. I don't have a lot of experience with it personally, and it definitely looks like a beast to try.

Another possibility might be to switch to BibLaTeX which makes customizability much easier.

But if I were in your shoes, especially if a deadline were coming up, I'd probably go ahead and leave the .bst file as is, and then, right before submitting to the journal, I'd modify the .bbl file that BibTeX generates after running BibTeX directly. (Be sure to back it up, since otherwise it'll get completely overwritten if you need to re-run BibTeX.) Those are typically fairly straightforward to edit, and the commands in there are actually what gets inserted into the document on the next compile. (BibTeX's responsibility is simply creating this file.) Indeed, you could even copy and paste this directly into your document where you previously had your BibTeX \bibliography line.

But perhaps that's taking the easy way out so to speak. And maybe someone else will know what to do here.

[waschbaer]

I did not think of directly editing the .bbl file. Thanks for that. However, I managed to create a custum bst file with makebst. Was quite easy and after fiddling around with the final version I am quite happy with it. In the beginning it takes a while thought to understand the code at least a bit in the bst file but after ripping out some hair out of my head I was able to add punctuation as desired.

cheers
Martin

[localghost]

Now that the problem is solved, please be so kind and mark the topic (not the last post) accordingly as written in Section 3 of the Board Rules. Please keep that in mind for the future so that further reminders will not be necessary.


Thorsten