Dissertation: How to customize *.bst?

Question

I am almost finished with my PhD thesis (of course in TeX) :) I was looking for hours for a nice bib style which fits the requirements of the Prof, then I looked into the *.bst which rather confused me. Unfortunately, I was not able to generate a bibliography, got me alot of errors. Anyway, the closest *.bst is cj.bst, but the YEAR should be in between the VOLUME and PAGES. Here is an example how it should look like:

Wester, H.J.; Herz, M.; Weber, W.; Heiss, P. Synthesis and radiopharmacology of O-(2- [18F]fluoroethyl)-L-tyrosine for tumor imaging. J Nucl Med 40 (1999) 205–212.

I really hope you can help me!

Answer 1

If you like bst hacking more than using a package like biblatex you may edit cj.bst. First add the date to FUNCTION {format.vol.num.pages}:

FUNCTION {format.vol.num.pages}
{ volume field.or.null
  duplicate$ empty$ 'skip$
    {
      "volume" bibinfo.check
    }
  if$
  bolden
  swap$
  date.block
  format.date "year" output.check
  format.journal.pages
}

then remove the date from FUNCTION {article}:

FUNCTION {article}
{ output.bibitem
  format.authors "author" output.check
  format.title "title" output.check
  new.sentence
  crossref missing$
    {
      journal
      "journal" bibinfo.check
      emphasize
      "journal" output.check
      format.vol.num.pages output
    }
    { format.article.crossref output.nonnull
      format.pages output
    }
  if$
  format.note output
  fin.entry
}

Additional changes to other entry types may be needed, depending on what you want. But if you really need several changes, I would recommend using biblatex.

Answer 2

I would recommend usage of biblatex, because you may configure it, without bst-hacking. You may start with, e.g.,

\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@article{ 
  anykeyyoulike,
  author = {Wester},
  title = {P. Synthesis and radiopharmacology of O-(2-
    [18F]fluoroethyl)-L-tyrosine for tumor imaging},
  journaltitle={J Nucl Med},
  volume=40,
  year={1999},
  pages={205-212}
}
\end{filecontents*}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[citestyle=authoryear,bibstyle=authortitle]{biblatex}
\bibliography{\jobname}

\begin{document}
\nocite{*}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Answer 3

Take a look the following, condensed listing of different styles. It helped me finding a proper (already predefined style) for all of my written work.

Answer 4

Do not hassle with hacking the .bst files. Most of them are very incomprehensible and it is hard to see what side effects small changes can cause.

While I would also recommend using biblatex instead of the older methods there is another alternative: custom-bib.

This script basically asks you 100 questions and produces a .bst file exactly as you want it.

Answer 5

Although you're a bit late in the game: If you don't absolutely have to use traditional bibtex, have a good look at biblatex. It gets rid of the .bst files, all the formatting is done in LaTeX. Besides that biblatex is much more powerful and has a much more complete data model. If you're not desperately running out of time, it's definitely worth to spend some time to get familiar with biblatex.

Personal anecdote: I myself switched to biblatex quite late during my PhD and I haven't regretted it for one moment.

Answer 6

Whereas you say that the cj.bst style file is "close" to what you need, you don't provide enough information to give you a full answer. You mention that you're writing your dissertation: does your academic department, or your university, provide a detailed set of formatting requirements? If so, is there a .bst file that someone has already created to meet these requirements? If that's the case, use that file and you're done (at least until after the dissertation's been accepted).

I'm pretty sure nobody will ever seriously recommend that you do any direct hacking of an existing .bst file in order to achieve your formatting objectives. But hacking an existing .bst file isn't the only way to go. As long as your prof's/department's/school's formatting requirements are spelled out reasonably clearly, you should consider running the program makebst to create a .bst file from scratch. (The file is part of the custombib package already mentioned in another answer.) The file makebst.tex can be run either from the command window or by loading it into an editor and then passing it through tex or latex. It'll ask you a lot of questions related to formatting of citations and bib entries; sometimes you'll be asked a yes/no question, more often you'll get quite a few options to choose from. (Don't be shy to use the verbose option; you'll get plenty of explanations.) The program's output is a customized .bst file which should meet all of your school's formatting requirements.