How to level columns in bibliography?

Question

I have been writing a scientific paper il Latex for an IEEE conference.

The paper style is in 2 columns, and the last page of the paper contains a part of bibliography references. These last references are all on the 1st column, leaving the 2nd column empty. I would like that these last reference lines were equally divided into both columns, as shown in the attached image:

I hope the image is clear...

The bibliography style I've been using is {thebibliography}

I knew there is a Latex command that allows me to separate the reference this way. How could I do?

Answer 1

You can use balance package. Put

\usepackage{balance}

in the preamble. Then, somewhere in the first column of the last page, put

\balance

Following is a screen shot from the manual of balance package.

Disclaimer: This solution may work depending on your class and bibliography style or (worst) may not work. To have an accurate answer, pl provide a MWE.

Answer 2

You can use the flushend package. Just add

\usepackage{flushend}

in your preamble. It will then take care of the balancing for you. There is no need to add a special macro on the final page of the document.

Answer 3

For IEEE papers, one can use \IEEEtriggeratref{} (as also suggested by @TedPavlic in the comments). See section XIV of IEEEtran LATEX Class documentation.