Volume number should not be displayed in italics with apacite bibliography style

Question

I am very new to LaTeX, and I'm trying to set up my citation and bibliography format. The only problem I have left is that my volume/issue is displayed in italics when I use the apacite bibliography style. How can I change this so that this is no longer in italics?

My text is as follows (I'm just trying things out for now):

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{thesis}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amsfonts}
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{apacite}
\usepackage[left=2cm,right=2cm,top=2cm,bottom=2cm]{geometry}
\usepackage[round]{natbib}

\author{Kristian Jensen}
\title{Bibliography in \LaTeX}
\begin{document}
\renewcommand{\BBAA}{and}  
\renewcommand{\BBAB}{and} 
\renewcommand{\BAnd}{and}


We are now going to try out how this works by doing a citation.

Here it is: \citep{Pressair}.

That's it for now.

\bibliographystyle{apacite}
\bibliography{mybib}

\end{document}

And from my mybib.bib file:

@Article{Pressair,
author = {Press, F., and Ewing, M.},
title = {Theory of aircoupled flexural waves},
journal = {Journal of Applied Physics},
volume = {22},
number = {7},
year = {1951},
pages = {892-899},
}

In my reference list now, everything looks OK except for the volume/issue which is displayed as 22(7) when I want it to be 22(7) (not italics). If anyone can help me fix this, then I will really appreciate it!

Answer 1

The apacite package contains a LaTeX macro that determines the default formatting of the journal, volume, number, and pages fields for entries of type @article. This macro is called \APACjournalVolNumPages, and its default definition may be found in apacite.sty starting at around line 1275.

To modify this macro, I suggest loading the etoolbox package and using that package's \patchcmd macro. Specifically, you should insert the following lines of code in the preamble, after having the loaded the apacite package:

\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\APACjournalVolNumPages}%
    {\unskip, \Bem{#2}}%
    {\unskip, #2}{}{}
\makeatother

The macro \Bem is an alias for \emph. Basically, the modification of the \APACjournalVolNumPages macro consists in removing the italics emphasis of the second argument -- the contents of the volume field.

A full MWE:

\RequirePackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{mybib.bib}
@Article{Pressair,
author =  {Press, F. and Ewing, M.},
title =   {Theory of aircoupled flexural waves},
journal = {Journal of Applied Physics},
volume =  {22},
number =  {7},
year =    {1951},
pages =   {892--899},
}
\end{filecontents}

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[margin=2cm]{geometry}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{amsmath,amsfonts,amssymb}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\usepackage[natbibapa]{apacite} % load "apacite" with option "natbibapa" 
\bibliographystyle{apacite} % specify the bibliography style

\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\patchcmd{\APACjournalVolNumPages}%
    {\unskip, \Bem{#2}}%
    {\unskip, #2}{}{}
\makeatother

\AtBeginDocument{%
    \renewcommand{\BBAA}{and}
    \renewcommand{\BBAB}{and}
    \renewcommand{\BAnd}{and}}

\begin{document}


\citep{Pressair}

\bibliography{mybib}

\end{document}