Include DOI in the 'agsm' biblio style without altering the agsm.bst file?

Question

I would like DOI to appear while using the agsm bibliography style. One solution suggested is to alter the .bst file (see hack for including doi in agsm bibliography style) but working on Overleaf, that is not appropriate.

Another solution would be to use the plainnat bibliography style, but then the first name appears before the last name, and to change that, you need to modify the .bst file too (Displaying author's name in a bibliographic entry in the form: Surname, First Initial of Firstname).

Is there a way to solve this issue without modifying the .bst file? Or is there an easy way to modify it on Overleaf?

the bath.bst bathx.bst show the doi and you can use it with overleaf - bath is a flexible version of the harvard referencing system - which I use instead of agsm now — fcbsd, Dec 09 '20 at 11:27
You can also use the 'modified .bst file approach' on Overleaf: Usually you can get the .bst from CTAN. You could then modify it on your machine and upload the .bst file to your Overleaf project, where it will be picked up by BibTeX and can be used as expected. — moewe, Dec 09 '20 at 15:01
... That said, I understand that this approach is a bit ... clunky. There is, however, generally no alternative to modifying .bst files if you want to change the output of a BIbTeX style (some styles are customisable with macros from the document preamble to some degree, but not in a way that adds support for new fields). An alternative would be to work around your style not supporting a doi field and using a general-purpose field (as is often done for URLs with the BibTeX base styles), but again, that doesn't feel nice. ... — moewe, Dec 09 '20 at 15:09
... A third alternative is to find a newer BibTeX style that supports newer fields and the features you want. https://ctan.org/pkg/bath-bst as suggested by fcbsd above would certainly not be a bad choice. Or you could switch from BibTeX to biblatex (which is a little more complex than just changing the style), biblatex can be configured with TeX code in the preamble of your document, so there is no need to mess with any .bst files. — moewe, Dec 09 '20 at 15:12
The switch to bath.bst is great with two minor drawbacks: doi is now shown through the url (from "DOI: XXX.XX.XX" to "Available from:https://doi.org/XXX.XX.XX") and the ISBN do not appear anymore for books. That's fine for the first one, but do you have a solution for the second? The two other suggested alternatives are fine but more clunky indeed :) — LouisD, Dec 10 '20 at 08:53
Now you are running into the same issue with bath.bst: The treatment of DOIs and omission of ISBN is coded into the .bst file. If you want to change that, you have to modify a copy of the .bst file. As mentioned before, generally you should expect having to modify the .bst file to change the output of a BibTeX style (there are some exceptions for common modifications in some styles, but usually not for bigger things like this). — moewe, Dec 11 '20 at 07:50

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 20 '23 at 12:12

As mentioned by @moewe, the easiest solution would be to use a general-purpose field accepted by agsm. I am working with my university's version of LaTeX and cannot modify or create any of such files. The paper I want to submit to asks for references in Harvard and with DOI.

I have followed this suggestion and used the "note" field as follows:

@article{acacio_changes_2021,
    title = {Changes in surface water drive the movements of Shoebills},
    note = {doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-95093-5},
    % other information
}

Produces:

The result is good enough for me.

Include DOI in the 'agsm' biblio style without altering the agsm.bst file?

1 Answers1