Change format of year and volume in apalike2 bibliography style

Question

I'm using the apalike2 bibliography style (with some minor customizations that are not related to my questions though.

When I reference an article the format currently looks like this:

Smith, James E.; Nair, Ravi (2005). The Architecture of Virtual Machines. Journal of
Computer, 38(5), pp. 32-38, 2005.

1.) How can I prepend the volume with a descriptor, e.g., "Volume 38(5)"?

The relevant function I have identified in the .bst file is format.vol.num.pages but I didn't figure out how to correctly adapt it.

FUNCTION {format.vol.num.pages}
{ volume field.or.null
  number empty$
    'skip$
    { "(" number * ")" * *
      volume empty$
    { "there's a number but no volume in " cite$ * warning$ }
    'skip$
      if$
    }
  if$
  pages empty$
    'skip$
    { duplicate$ empty$
    { pop$ format.pages }
    { ", pp.~" * pages n.dashify * }    % changed from ":" for vol,pgs -- BJR 10/5/89
      if$
    }
  if$
}

2.) When I have works of the same author in the same year, an entry may look like this:

Microsoft Corporation (2013a). BitLocker Overview. http://technet.microsoft.com/
en-us/library/hh831713.aspx, 2013a.

How can I change the year in the last column so that only the year is displayed, i.e., without the "a"? There seem to be functions output.year.check and format.year.check but again I am stuck with adapting it.

Any help is much appreciated.

Thank you very much in advance

Answer 1

Make a copy of apalike2.bst and put it in a place where BibTeX can find it. In your copy, change line 197 from

 " (" year * extra.label * ")" *

to

 " (" year * ")" *

to get rid of the extra label in the year (your second request).

In function format.vol.num.pages change line 524 from

 'skip$

to

  { "Volume~" swap$ * }

to have a "Volume" in front of the volume.

Save and use the new copy as your bibliography style.