Underscore in bibtex url

Question

I'm trying to include a link to some code on OneDrive; the link includes an underscore, which is causing a lot of trouble.

I tried adding the entry like this:

@misc{code,
    title = {Code},
    url = {https://1drv.ms/link_link}
}

I use \usepackage{url} and \bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}. Everything compiles fine and the bibliography shows the correct entry. However, if you click the link, it opens a page at https://1drv.ms/link - so ignoring the underscore and everything after it, which leads to a wrong page. Even copy and paste from the PDF doesn't work since the underscore is copied as space, which again is a broken link.

How can I add the link such that it can be clicked and copied properly? I tried \_, \usepackage{underscore}, {{link}}, different bibtex entries but nothing worked. Also all the related questions/answers don't answer mine.

Answer 1

In case of IEEE templates, when using the file bib, replacing the underscore with {\_} should solve the problem. In the case of the question:

@misc{code,
    title = {Code},
    url = {https://1drv.ms/link{\_}link}
}

Answer 2

Just to formally answer and close this question: As Ulrike Fischer answered in the comments, the solution was to use \usepackage{hyperref} (or \usepackage[hidelinks]{hyperref} to avoid the ugly boxes) and \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}. This allows properly clicking and copy-&-pasting URLs with underscores.

However, it turned out, using package hyperref wasn't allowed when trying to submit the paper to IEEE. So I ended up simply changing the URL to something without underscore using goo.gl (or bitly since goo.gl is down).

MWE

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{hyperref}

\usepackage{filecontents}

\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
    @misc{code,
        title = {Code},
        url = {https://1drv.ms/link_link}
    }
\end{filecontents*}

\begin{document}

\cite{code}

\bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
\bibliography{\jobname}

\end{document}

Result

Answer 3

I do not know why, but the other solutions did not work for me, this did however:

1. Delete auxiliary files (.bbl)

2. In the bib file, replace the url by:

   url = {{https://doi.org.123345\_6789}}

Note, the double curly braces and non arround \_.

Answer 4

I stumbled upon this solution from bibtex.com, which is not covered in other answers:

% if the DOI contains an "_" it must be escaped by "\{_}"
doi = "10.1057/9780230375048\{_}3"

It is for the doi field but maybe it is applicable to others as well.

Answer 5

I'd recommend using sourcemaps in your Latex-File. That way you don't need to adapt the bib file or anything, For example, to escape an underscore (symbol 5F in unicode), one can use the following:

\DeclareSourcemap{
    \maps[datatype=bibtex, overwrite]{
        \map{
            \step[fieldsource=url, match=\regexp{\x{5F}}, replace=\regexp{\\\x{5F}}]
        }
    }
}