Suppress abbreviated citation in list of references when using nocite

Question

Dear TeX Exchange users,

I'm converting a MS Word document to LaTeX and am using \nocite{*} to include a bibliography of references that are not cited within the .tex document using \cite, rather are just plain text. However, I'd like to suppress the appearance of the abbreviated citation before each reference in the list (i.e. if I use the 'plain' bibliography style, there is a [1] before the first reference etc..).

I can provide a MWE if my explanation is unclear, thanks in advance for any help offered.

Answer 1

Perhaps it would be better to use a style not labeling the bibliographical items. If, for some reason, you want to keep the plain style, then you can add the following lines to the preamble:

\usepackage{etoolbox}

\AtBeginEnvironment{thebibliography}{\setlength\labelsep{0pt}}{}
\makeatletter
\renewcommand\@biblabel[1]{}
\makeatother

The \renewcommand line suppresses the label used in the document and the line beginning with \AtBeginEnvironment simply suppresses the small remaining indentation of the items given by \labelsep.