Eliminating words in citation format, either "doi" or "Retrieved from"

Question

latex novice here...long story short, I am using apacite package and bibliography style, however I am technically following the AGU format, which is an even more restrictive version of APA 6th....

All of my references are good except for this part "Retrieved from https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2004JB003084" I basically need exactly that but like this "https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2004JB003084" or more clearly, without the "Retrieved from" part, is there a way to do this without messing the format too much? Maybe a workaround?

Thank you for your time :]

P.S.: I was also thinking I could use the doi field, but then again in the bibliography it appears as "doi:10.1029/2004JB003084" and I also would need to get rid of the "doi:" part since it's considered dated/incorrect for this AGU format :(

Answer 1

I understand that you want to remove "Retrieved from" from the url display. This is controlled in apacite by \BRetrievedFrom. You can renew that command to eliminate the string.

I made a short example (using the article class) to illustrate the first approach. I also included some style commands to approximate the AGU style observed on the link you gave (more work would be needed to precisely match), but these are not important to the question you asked.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[%
    pdfborder={0 0 0},%  <=== make some edits toward AGU style links (on the web page mentioned)
    colorlinks=true,%
    linkcolor=blue, %
    citecolor=blue, % 
    urlcolor=blue,  % 
    breaklinks=true,%
            ]{hyperref}
\usepackage{url}    % <== linebreaking in url       

\usepackage{apacite} 
\AtBeginDocument{%
   \renewcommand{\BRetrievedFrom}{}  % <=== This addresses your main request (no "Retrieved from")
   \renewcommand{\BAstyle}{\itshape} % <=== made some other edits toward AGU style...
   \urlstyle{APACsame}%
   \renewcommand{\BBAA}{and}%
   \renewcommand{\BBOP}{[}%
   \renewcommand{\BBCP}{]}%
}
    
%% let's have a boldface volume number like AGU
\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\APACjournalVolNumPages}[4]{% 
  \Bem{#1}%             journal
  \ifx\@empty#2\@empty
  \else
    \unskip, {\bfseries #2}%  volume          %%% <=== changed \Bem{#2} to {\bfseries #2}
  \fi
  \ifx\@empty#3\@empty
  \else
    \unskip\ ({#3})%    issue number, with the added leading space
  \fi
  \ifx\@empty#4\@empty
  \else
    \unskip, {#4}%      pages
  \fi
}%
\makeatother
    

% sample .bib file
\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}  
    @article{aguref,
    author  = {Pablo Stackexchanger and Agu Journal},
    journal = {Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth},
    volume  = {109},
    pages   = {1469--1481},
    year    = {2004},
    title   = {How to include the {URL} without seeing `{R}etrieved from'},
    url     = {https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2004JB003084},
}
\end{filecontents*}   

\begin{document}
We can use the URL field of \texttt{apacite} as desired by \citeA{aguref}.  

\bibliographystyle{apacite}
\bibliography{\jobname}

\end{document}

A couple further comments:

1. The default \BRetrievedfrom is \renewcommand{\BRetrievedFrom}{Retrieved from\ }. (There is also a \BRetrieved defined as \renewcommand{\BRetrieved}[1]{Retrieved {#1}, from\ }, where the argument is the urldate entry.)
2. In some styles, a very simple way to include a url is through the note = {}, entry, especially for bst styles that do not support url = {}. For this specific style, however, notes are are placed in parentheses, which a commentator has stated is not correct for APA 7th.

There is an old AGU bst style (v2.2, 2003) which does not have a url entry, although you could use note as above. Today's AGU Latex template (agujournal2019.cls) is using apacite as the \bibliographystyle. The class includes some customization. So, you could make a simpler modification if you are using that class file:

\documentclass{agujournal2019}
    
\AtBeginDocument{\renewcommand{\BRetrievedFrom}{}}  % <=== This addresses your request (no "Retrieved from")

% sample .bib file
\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}  
    @article{aguref,
    author  = {Pablo Stackexchanger and Agu Journal},
    journal = {Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth},
    volume  = {109},
    pages   = {1469--1481},
    year    = {2004},
    title   = {How to include the {URL} without seeing `{R}etrieved from'},
    url     = {https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2004JB003084},
}
\end{filecontents*}   

\begin{document}
We can use the URL field of \texttt{apacite} as desired by \citeA{aguref}.  

%\bibliographystyle{apacite} % <==== OMIT, because the class issues this command
\bibliography{\jobname}

\end{document}

Here's the result:

Note that the change to \BRetrievedFrom needs to be delayed to the beginning of the document as done here.

Finally, I will mention that parentheses can be removed from the content of note = {..} when using this style by putting the following code in the preamble:

\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\APACrefnote}[1]{%
  \ifx\@empty#1\@empty
  \else
    {#1}%
  \fi
}
\makeatother

Answer 2

Partially answered, one can remove the doi prefix using

    \renewcommand{\doiprefix}{}

More info at doi hyperlinks show up as "doi:doi" in my references