Bibliography customization, year as bib label

Question

I'm hoping to arrive at a simple bibliography customization where the year appears as the bib label.

Firstly, I consider that the solution could come from creating a .bst file, re-defining the biblabel or a combination of the latter (or maybe something simple I'm overlooking).

I typically use biblatex with biber as a backend.

Desired functionality

The following refers to the formatting of the entries made by \printbibliography. I'm not concerned here with citation style because \nocite{*} is used.

As background, consider a collection .bib items which are less like article citations, instead the content is predominantly limited to title, note, and sometimes month fields.

I would essentially like to replace the biblabel with the year from the bib entry. The body of the bib entry could follow the same logical sequence of a popular style with few exceptions. The year is not needed in the body of the bib entry.

Implementation of this may also require having a generous indent of the body of the bib entry; four characters for the year and then some. All body lines would have the same indent. The bib label text and the first line would be on the same line.

The option to make the biblabel some assembly of the month and year (e.g. <month>, <year>) also has a likely use case. One might also want to specify the indentation of the body on the fly if one jumped from having the year as bib label versus month + year as biblabel between different refsections.

How might this work?

This post explains how to change the position of the year. Perhaps it could shed light on how to remove it?

This post describes the authoryear style for biblatex. Perhaps a year style is already possible?

Answer 1

Throwing together code for mergedate and poking about with local and global labeldate settings we arrive at

\documentclass{scrartcl}

\usepackage[labeldateparts, locallabelwidth]{biblatex}

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\DeclareFieldFormat{labeldatewidth}{\mkbibparens{#1}}

\defbibenvironment{bibliography}
  {\list
     {\printtext[labeldatewidth]{\printlabeldate}}
     {\setlength{\labelwidth}{\labeldatewidth}%
      \setlength{\leftmargin}{\labelwidth}%
      \setlength{\labelsep}{\biblabelsep}%
      \addtolength{\leftmargin}{\labelsep}%
      \setlength{\itemsep}{\bibitemsep}%
      \setlength{\parsep}{\bibparsep}}%
      \renewcommand*{\makelabel}[1]{##1\hss}}
  {\endlist}
  {\item}

\renewbibmacro*{date}{%
  \ifboolexpr{
    test {\iflabeldateisdate}
    and
    not test {\ifdateshavedifferentprecision{label}{}}
  }
    {}
    {\printdate}}

\renewbibmacro*{issue+date}{%
  \ifboolexpr{
    test {\iflabeldateisdate}
    and
    not test {\ifdateshavedifferentprecision{label}{}}
    and
    test {\iffieldundef{issue}}
  }
    {}
    {\printtext[parens]{%
       \printfield{issue}%
       \setunit*{\addspace}%
       \printdate}}%
  \newunit}

\makeatletter
\newlength{\labeldatewidth}
\newlength{\locallabeldatewidth}

\appto\abx@dolabelwidths{\do{labeldate}}

\AtDataInput{%
  \nottoggle{blx@skipbib}
    {\begingroup
     \blx@getlabeldata
     \blx@setlabwidth{\labeldatewidth}{%
       \printtext[labeldatewidth]{\printlabeldate}}%
     \endgroup}
    {}}

\AtEveryBibitem{%
  \blx@setlabwidth{\locallabeldatewidth}{%
     \printtext[labeldatewidth]{\printlabeldate}}}

\newrobustcmd*{\changedateformat}[2]{%
  \csdef{blx@dateformat@#1date}{#2}%
  \protected\csdef{blx@imc@print#1date}{\csuse{mkdaterange#2}{#1}}%
  \protected\csdef{blx@imc@print#1dateextra}{\csuse{mkdaterange#2extra}{#1}}}
\makeatletter



\begin{document}

\nocite{sigfridsson, worman, knuth:ct:a, knuth:ct:b, knuth:ct:c, nussbaum, vizedom:related, baez/online, itzhaki, markey, wassenberg}

\printbibliography

\changedateformat{label}{long}

\printbibliography
\end{document}

edit Updated to work with biblatex v3.16. For older versions of biblatex refer to the edit history.

Answer 2

Perhaps it is possible to adapt the alphabetic style to use the year as labelalpha. Proof of concept:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[style=alphabetic]{biblatex}

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\DeclareLabelalphaTemplate{
  \labelelement{
    \field[strwidth=4,strside=right]{year}
  }
}

\defbibenvironment{bibliography}
  {\list
     {\printtext[labelalphawidth]{%
        \printfield{labelprefix}%
        \printfield{labelalpha}}}
     {\setlength{\labelwidth}{\labelalphawidth}%
      \setlength{\leftmargin}{\labelwidth}%
      \setlength{\labelsep}{\biblabelsep}%
      \addtolength{\leftmargin}{\labelsep}%
      \setlength{\itemsep}{\bibitemsep}%
      \setlength{\parsep}{\bibparsep}}%
      \renewcommand*{\makelabel}[1]{##1\hss}}
  {\endlist}
  {\item}

\DeclareFieldFormat{labelalphawidth}{\mkbibparens{#1}}

\begin{document}

\nocite{*}

\printbibliography

\end{document}

Update: If you'd also like to remove the year from the references in cases in which the date is comprised only of the year, you can go with (courtesy of moewe):

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[style=alphabetic]{biblatex}

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\DeclareLabelalphaTemplate{
  \labelelement{
    \field[strwidth=4,strside=right]{year}
  }
}

\defbibenvironment{bibliography}
  {\list
     {\printtext[labelalphawidth]{%
        \printfield{labelprefix}%
        \printfield{labelalpha}}}
     {\setlength{\labelwidth}{\labelalphawidth}%
      \setlength{\leftmargin}{\labelwidth}%
      \setlength{\labelsep}{\biblabelsep}%
      \addtolength{\leftmargin}{\labelsep}%
      \setlength{\itemsep}{\bibitemsep}%
      \setlength{\parsep}{\bibparsep}}%
      \renewcommand*{\makelabel}[1]{##1\hss}}
  {\endlist}
  {\item}

\renewbibmacro*{date}{%
    \ifboolexpr{
        test {\iffieldundef{month}}
        and
        test {\iffieldundef{season}}
        }
    {}
    {\printdate}}

\renewbibmacro*{issue+date}{%
    \ifboolexpr{
        test {\iffieldundef{month}}
        and
        test {\iffieldundef{season}}
        and
        test {\iffieldundef{issue}}
        }
    {}
    {\printtext[parens]{%
     \printfield{issue}%
     \setunit*{\addspace}%
     \printdate}}%
     \newunit}

\DeclareFieldFormat{labelalphawidth}{\mkbibparens{#1}}

\begin{document}

\nocite{*}

\printbibliography

\end{document}