Changing position of year in natbib with plainnat style

Question

I am using Miktex with Natbib such as:

\usepackage{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{plainnat}
\bibliography{model}

When the bibliography prints out the author year is at the end. I need it to go after the list of authors. Can someone help me please?

Answer 1

Copy the file plainnat.bst to myplainnat.bst and save it into your document directory. Then look into this file at the lower half you'll find the definitions for the different entries, e.g. for book:

FUNCTION {book}
{ output.bibitem
  author empty$
    { format.editors "author and editor" output.check
      editor format.key output
    }
    { format.authors output.nonnull
      crossref missing$
        { "author and editor" editor either.or.check }
        'skip$
      if$
    }
  if$
  new.block
  format.btitle "title" output.check
  crossref missing$
    { format.bvolume output
      new.block
      format.number.series output
      new.sentence
      publisher "publisher" output.check
      address output
    }
    { new.block
      format.book.crossref output.nonnull
    }
  if$
  format.edition output
  format.date "year" output.check
  format.isbn output
  format.doi output
  format.url output
  new.block
  note output
  fin.entry
}

now you can change the order which is in your case move up the line for the date.