How to omit url, doi, and urldate fields while using the IEEEtran bibliography style?

Question

The \bibliographystyle{IEEEtran} in my IEEE Overleaf template produces:

[1] D. C. Knill and A. Pouget, “The Bayesian brain: the role of uncertainty in neural coding and computation ”Trends in Neurosciences,vol. 27, no. 12, pp. 712–719, Dec. 2004.
[Online]. Available: http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0166223604003352

but I want:

[1] D. C. Knill and A. Pouget, “The Bayesian brain: the role of uncertainty in neural coding and computation,” Trends in Neurosciences, vol. 27, no. 12, pp. 712–719, Dec. 2004.

How can I get rid of the '[Online]' and 'Available:' strings, as well as of the contents of the url field itself?

I have synced my Zotero library with Overleaf to produce a .bib file. Entries look as follows:

@article{knill_bayesian_2004,
        title = {The {Bayesian} brain: the role of uncertainty in 
        neural coding and computation},
        volume = {27},
        issn = {01662236},
        shorttitle = {The {Bayesian} brain},
        url =          
       {http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0166223604003352},
        doi = {10.1016/j.tins.2004.10.007},
        language = {en},
        number = {12},
        urldate = {2018-11-14TZ},
        journal = {Trends in Neurosciences},
        author = {Knill, David C. and Pouget, Alexandre},
        month = dec,
        year = {2004},
        pages = {712--719}
}

I use bibtex to generate the bibliography.

\bibliography{bibtex/bib/references_from_zotero.bib}
\bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}

Does anyone know a better way than to manually remove the url, doi, and urldate from either Zotero or the resulting .bbl file?

I have tried to untick the 'Include URLS of paper articles in references' box Zotero for Mac --> Preferences --> Cite and then resync with Overleaf. This didn't have an effect.

Answer 1

the IEEEtran.bst has an in-built control system.

Add this to your bib:

@IEEEtranBSTCTL{IEEEexample:BSTcontrol,
CTLuse_url = "no",
}

and then compile your document like this (the definition is not needed if you are using a IEEE class):

\documentclass[10pt]{book}
\makeatletter
\def\bstctlcite{\@ifnextchar[{\@bstctlcite}{\@bstctlcite[@auxout]}}
\def\@bstctlcite[#1]#2{%
 \@bsphack
 \@for\@citeb:=#2\do{%
 \edef\@citeb{\expandafter\@firstofone\@citeb}%
 \if@filesw\immediate\write\csname #1\endcsname{\string\citation{\@citeb}}\fi}%
 \@esphack}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\bstctlcite{IEEEexample:BSTcontrol}
\cite{knill_bayesian_2004}
\bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
\bibliography{test}

\end{document}

For more info check \IEEEtran_bst_HOWTO.pdf.

Answer 2

Look for IEEEtran.bst in your TeX distribution files. For Windows and MiKTeX 2.9, this would be C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\MiKTeX\2.9\bibtex\bst\ieeetran. Make a backup copy of it and save it under different name (e.g., IEEEtranbak.bst). Open IEEEtran.bst (your LaTeX editor would work for that) and and look for FUNCTION {default.is.use.url} { #1 } and change it to FUNCTION {default.is.use.url} { #0 }

\begin{filecontents*}{sample.bib}
@article{knill,
    title = {The {Bayesian} brain: the role of uncertainty in 
        neural coding and computation},
    volume = {27},
    issn = {01662236},
    shorttitle = {The {Bayesian} brain},
    url =          
    {http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0166223604003352},
    doi = {10.1016/j.tins.2004.10.007},
    language = {en},
    number = {12},
    urldate = {2018-11-14TZ},
    journal = {Trends in Neurosciences},
    author = {Knill, David C. and Pouget, Alexandre},
    month = dec,
    year = {2004},
    pages = {712--719}
}
\end{filecontents*}

\documentclass[]{IEEEtran}

\usepackage[square, nonamebreak, sort&compress, comma, numbers]{natbib}

\begin{document}

\cite{knill}

\newpage
\bibliographystyle{IEEEtran}
\bibliography{sample}

\end{document}