De-Italicise Volume Numbers in Bibliography

Question

I've just started using biblatex and biber to compile my bibliographies. Everything is great, except I'm having two problems: (1) I want to get rid of the issue number for journal articles; and (2) I don't want the volume number for journal articles to be in italics.

I've found a solution to the first problem, I just have to have the following command in the preamble:

\AtEveryBibitem{\clearfield{number}}

My question is: is there a similarly simple fix for de-italicising the volume numbers?

Thanks for the help!

(I use Mendeley as my reference manager, so I can't mess around with my .bib file)

Here's a MWE:


\usepackage{calc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{ebgaramond}
\usepackage[style=apa, natbib=true, doi=false, url=false]{biblatex}

\addbibresource{/Users/James/Documents/library.bib}

\AtEveryBibitem{\clearfield{number}}
\setlength\bibitemsep{1.5\itemsep}

\title{Customising My Bibliography}
\date{\vspace{-8ex}}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\noindent Hello, I want to cite \citet{Steinberger2016, Steinberger2019b} without the volume number in the bibliography being italicised.

\printbibliography
\end{document}

And here's what it outputs:

Normally (that is to say with the biblatex standard styles and no additional configuration) the volume is not italicised. So either there is some manual markup in your .bib file or you use a style that italicises the volume. Please show us a short example document (an MWE: https://tex.meta.stackexchange.com/q/228/35864) that reproduces what you are seeing at the moment so we can see what is going on and so we can suggest a suitable solution. — moewe, Nov 27 '19 at 21:23
Hi, I've added a MWE to my original question. Thanks for your help! — James Evershed, Nov 28 '19 at 09:32
For future reference I'd like to mention that the code posted in the question is not an MWE: It is missing a \documentclass, so if we copy and paste it into an empty document the code will not run as expected. It also calls a file /Users/James/Documents/library.bib that we don't have. If you need specific entries from your .bib file, please post them here as well. If you can live with generic entries from biblatex-examples.bib, use that (see the MWE in my answer). (The MWE was also not completely minimal, since it loads packages like ebgaramond that aren't needed, but that is OK.) — moewe, Nov 28 '19 at 20:07

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 28 '19 at 19:18

biblatex-apa implements the guidelines of the APA publication manual as closely as possible with biblatex. One of the aspects of APA style is that the volume number should be set in italics.

It is fairly simple to change that with a \DeclareFieldFormat declaration, but this is a hint that maybe you shouldn't be using biblatex-apa. Since biblatex-apa was specifically designed to implement the complex guidelines of APA style, it is not as flexible and easily customisable as other biblatex styles (notably the standard styles are much more customisable). That's why it is usually a bad idea to use biblatex-apa if you want a style that is not APA.

\documentclass[british]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{csquotes}

\usepackage[style=apa, natbib=true, doi=false, url=false]{biblatex}

\DeclareFieldFormat[article]{volume}{\apanum{#1}}

\addbibresource{biblatex-examples.bib}

\begin{document}
\parencite{sigfridsson}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

My preferred way to suppress the number field would be

\DeclareSourcemap{
  \maps[datatype=bibtex, overwrite]{
    \map{
      \step[fieldset=number, null]
    }
  }
}

Alternatives and more details are discussed at How to omit address field while using biblatex, Is it possible to suppress a specific field from bibtex .bbl in biblatex?, Remove title in biblatex references,

Thanks so much, super helpful!! – James Evershed Nov 28 '19 at 19:25 — James Evershed, Nov 28 '19 at 19:25

De-Italicise Volume Numbers in Bibliography

1 Answers1