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My .bib-file is biblatex-formatted but I'm now submitting a paper to a journal that requires natbib.

Is there a way to tell natbib in my preamble to ad hoc convert the location field back to address, the date field to year, and journaltitle to journal?

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{natbib}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents}{\jobname.bib}
@book{mybook,
    Location = {City},
    Author = {Author, Antonia},
    Publisher = {Publisher Press},
    Title = {The Book of Books},
    Date = {1992}}
\end{filecontents}

\begin{document}
My book \citep{mybook} ... 
\bibliographystyle{chicago}
\bibliography{\jobname.bib}
\end{document}
jan
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    Not that it matters a lot, but the code is not compilable for two reasons: (1) \reftitle is undefined. (2) there is no \bibliographystyle, so BibTeX does not know which style to use. – moewe Dec 01 '21 at 07:14
  • Thanks, I guess those were defined in the journal's class file – I have never used natbib before so it's all new territory for me. – jan Dec 01 '21 at 07:29

1 Answers1

2

There is no simple way (e.g. a preamble option) to have BibTeX styles accept biblatex fields they do not support (you would have to edit the style file).

Your best bet is to 'convert' your .bib file to the correct format with an external tool. Well-known tools for that task include

But there are many BibTeX parsing libraries for many programming languages, so you could also look at using your favourite programming language.

Of course if you always just have date = {<year>}, with that spacing a simple search-and-replace in your editor would also work. (Possibly with some RegExp thrown in to deal with additional spaces.)

Note that the set of supported fields and entry types depends on the bibliography style you are using. Even among natbib-compatible styles there is not insignificant variation in what is accepted and what not. (It is true that there is a base set of 'standard' fields and types that is supported by most - if not all - BibTeX styles. This base set is good enough for many uses, but was devised before URLs were a thing and so does not include dedicated fields for online sources.)

moewe
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  • These are great resources. The issue is that I was hoping to be able to submit my biblatex-formatted .bib-file to the journal and have something in my preamble so when they typeset it it wouldn't choke. But it seems that might not be possible (I'm not sure they would be able or willing to process the bibliography file with the --tool option of biber if I told them to). So I'll probably have to change my .bib file, which I was hoping to avoid :( – jan Dec 01 '21 at 07:44
  • @jan Depending on the journal workflow they may not want you to submit a .bib file at all. Often you have to paste the .bbl generated by BibTeX into the .tex document instead (see e.g. https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Questions/The_journal_says_%22don%27t_use_BibTeX%3B_paste_the_contents_of_the_.bbl_file_into_the_.tex_file%22._How_do_I_do_this_on_Overleaf%3F) And even if the journal accepts .bib files it might be better to only send them the bits of your .bib file that they need (and not the hundreds of papers you have in your database but did not cite). – moewe Dec 01 '21 at 16:40
  • In any case I suggest you keep your biblatex .bib file as is and work with a (possibly reduced) copy that you can format BibTeX compatible for submission. – moewe Dec 01 '21 at 16:40
  • Yeah, I will see what files they actually accept (currently have the PDF under review so haven't had to deal with the typesetters yet). Submitting the .bbl file or pasting it into the file is probably the most error-proof solution anyways. – jan Dec 02 '21 at 23:53