How do I convert my bibliography items from BibTeX to an embedded format?

Question

There exist two major ways of defining a bibliography:

1. Embedded

   Declare \begin{thebibliography} at the end of your file and use \bibitem . The entries look like

   \bibitem{amin1}
     S.~P. Beeby, M.~J. Tudor, and N.~White, ``Energy harvesting vibration sources
     for microsystems applications,'' {\em Measurement science and
     technology}~{\bf 17}(12), p.~R175, 2006.
   

2. Using BibTeX- The entries are stored in a .bib file. The entries look like :-

    @article{amin1,
     title={Energy harvesting vibration sources for microsystems applications},
     author={Beeby, S Pꎬ and Tudor, M Jꎬ and White, NM},
     journal={Measurement science and technology},
     volume={17},
     number={12},
     pages={R175},
     year={2006},
     publisher={IOP Publishing}
   }
   

Is there an easy, automated way to convert entries from 2 to 1.

I have been using format 2, i.e using a bib file. But I want to switch to format 1 without manually changing all the entries. Is this possible?

Answer 1

The conversion from a BibTeX .bib file to an embedded thebibliography environment depends on the bibliography style you're after. The style defines the layout and formatting of specific @type references.

The suggestion would be to:

1. Use BibTeX to compile your file under the specific style you're interested in. For example,

   \documentclass{article}
   
   \usepackage{filecontents}
   \begin{filecontents*}{references.bib}
   @article{greenwade93,
     author = {George D. Greenwade},
     title = {The {C}omprehensive {T}ex {A}rchive {N}etwork ({CTAN})},
     year = {1993},
     journal = {TUGBoat},
     volume = {14},
     number = {3},
     pages = {342--351}
   }
   \end{filecontents*}
   
   \begin{document}
   
   \nocite{*}
   
   \bibliographystyle{plain}
   \bibliography{references}
   
   \end{document}
   

   When compiled using LaTeX > BibTeX > LaTeX > LaTeX, the above minimal example (called filename.tex) creates filename.bbl:

   \begin{thebibliography}{1}
   
   \bibitem{greenwade93}
   George~D. Greenwade.
   \newblock The {C}omprehensive {T}ex {A}rchive {N}etwork ({CTAN}).
   \newblock {\em TUGBoat}, 14(3):342--351, 1993.
   
   \end{thebibliography}
   

   BibTeX already took care of the formatting and layout, as well as the sort order (if that has been specified in some way, even using a different package).

2. Exchange

   \bibliographystyle{plain}
   \bibliography{references}
   

   for

   \input{filename.bbl}
   

   in your code.