Elegant way to make entire citation bold

Question

Is it possible to make an entire reference appear bold in the references section when using BibTeX? I'm using the IEEE templates and .bst.

I found this related question, but is there a more elegant way to highlight certain entries rather than just adding \textbf{} to every field in my .bib file?

Note that I only want to highlight selected entries from my bilbiography, so changing the whole thing wouldn't accomplish what I'm trying to do.

Unfortunately, I can't use biblatex as \usepackage[style=ieee]{biblatex} differs from what I get using the official IEEE .bst

Answer 1

Assuming numeric citations, here's a way: put the following code in your document preamble.

\usepackage{xparse}
\ExplSyntaxOn

\clist_new:N \g_boldcite_list_clist
\cs_new:Npn \boldcite_checkkey:n #1
 {
  \clist_if_in:NnTF \g_boldcite_list_clist { #1 } { \bfseries } { \mdseries } \boldcite_bibitem:n {#1}
 }
\cs_set_eq:NN \boldcite_bibitem:n \bibitem

\RenewDocumentCommand{\bibitem}{m}
 {
  \boldcite_checkkey:n { #1 }
 }
\NewDocumentCommand{\boldreferences}{m}
 {
  \clist_gput_right:Nn \g_boldcite_list_clist { #1 }
 }
\ExplSyntaxOff

You can then add any number of commands

\boldreferences{key1,key2}

where you list the keys of the references you want to embolden.