BibTeX, biblatex and biber ⇒ sentence case vs. lower case in article title

[pallav]

I have written the references spmpsci.bst (a Springer Journal bst available in Springer website). The titles of the reference articles are coming in lower case but it is necessary them in sentence case. But for the case of books, it comes fine.

Code: Select all

\documentclass[twocolumn]{svjour3}
\usepackage[parfill]{parskip}
\usepackage{float,graphicx,psfrag} 
\usepackage[colorlinks, bookmarks=true]{hyperref}
\hypersetup{colorlinks = true,linkcolor = blue, anchorcolor = blue, citecolor = blue, filecolor = red,urlcolor = red}
\usepackage[numbers,comma,sort&compress,sectionbib,square]{natbib}
\begin{document}
\section{Intro}
(see \cite{gopalsamy1992stability,hsu2001global} and references there in)
\bibliography{testIII}
\bibliographystyle{spmpsci}
\end{document}

My bib file, bst and other necessary files are attached herewith. Notice that, the words "michaelis–menten-type" in 2nd reference should be like "Michaelis–Menten-type" in the output pdf file.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

That's a feature of the Springer style. If I would publish with Springer using their style, I would not change that convention it even if I would like it differently.

However, it could be done easily, there are two possible ways:

• Protect the title from changing to lower case by adding braces:

  Code: Select all

  title={{Global analysis of the Michaelis--Menten-type ...}},

  This could also be done for single words instead, even for single letters, such as {M}ichaelis. However, I would not do it for single letters to keep proper kerning. For example, {T}est would look bad compared to {Test}.
• Edit the .bst file. Look for change.case, i.e. here

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  FUNCTION {format.title}
  { title
    duplicate$ empty$ 'skip$
      { "t" change.case$ }
    if$
    "title" bibinfo.check
  }

  remove "t" change.case$, i.e. keep just { } on the line. I would work with a copy of the style with a different name, not changing the original style file.

Stefan

[pallav]

Thank you Stefan_K very much. The suggestions work good. I am afraid to change the spmpsci.bst, thought it is the easiest process. Your 1st process is also very good but its too a bit time consuming. Though, I will go for process I. I thought that there would have some special code to be written in the preamble of the tex file to protect the sentence case.

Thank you once again.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Yes, it's a BibTeX issue in this case, so it cannot be solved by LaTeX settings. Regarding the .bst file change, in such cases I would create a copy of spmpsci.bst, for example name it myspmpsci.bst, do the change there, and write \bibliographystyle{myspmpsci} in my document. So I always have the original file for reference. Also in other similar cases, to not have side effects, such as when I modify standard styles such as plain.bst which has the same behavior.

It's a general convention, whenever a LaTeX file is changed by somebody who is not the author or maintainer, so save or to distribute it with another name, to avoid incompatibilities. It doesn't matter much when working only with own files, locally. But on a public forum I have to recommend it.

Stefan

[pallav]

Yes you are right. I understood. Thanks for all your effort and suggestions.