Modifying agsm.bst package bibliography output

Question

I would like to change the URL output from:

URL: the html link

into:

[Online]URL: [Accessed on]

I am using:

\usepackage[comma]{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{agsm}

Answer 1

Here I have explained the step by step to modify another bst from the harvard bundle; please refer to it for the step-by-step.

agsm.bst does not provide a urldate field, so you'd have to add by yourself to a modified bibtex style. I created the agsm-url.bst from the original agsm.bst and added a urldate field to it as in this answer. The diff:

43a44
>     urldate
165c166,171
<     { "\newline\harvardurl{" URL * "}" * write$ newline$ }
---
>     { "\newline\harvardurl{" URL * "}" * write$ newline$ 
>     urldate empty$
>       { skip$ }
>       { "[Accessed on: " urldate * "]" * write$ newline$ }
>       if$
>     }

^{If you don't want the linebreak before the URL block, just delete the \newline}

Then I redefined the \harvardurl macro with

\renewcommand{\harvardurl}[1]{[Online] URL: \textit{#1}}

^{See this answer about redefining it to add hyperlinks with hyperref}

Here's a MWE:

% Adapted bib file from tugboat.bib
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
  @article{online,
    author = {Robert Welland},
    title = {{Editor's Comments}},
    journal = {TUGboat},
    volume = {1},
    number = {1},
    pages = {2--3},
    month = oct,
    year = {1980},
    ISSN = {0896-3207},
    urldate = {Fri Jul 13 10:24:20 MDT 2007},
    url = {http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/tex/bib/tugboat.bib}
  }
  @article{offline,
    author = {Richard Palais},
    title = {{Message from the Chairman}},
    journal = {TUGboat},
    volume = {1},
    number = {1},
    pages = {3--7},
    month = oct,
    year = {1980},
  }
\end{filecontents}
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[comma]{natbib}
% natbib.sty, line 1042:
\renewcommand{\harvardurl}[1]{[Online] URL: \textit{#1}}
\begin{document}
\cite{online,offline}
\bibliographystyle{agsm-url}
\bibliography{\jobname}
\end{document}

And the output: