Make \url{} entry visible in bibliography

Question

I'm using a bibliography management software (Zotero) that exports weblinks in this format:

@misc{spielmandaniel-DiscrepancyTheoryRandomized-2021,
  title = {But what is the Fourier Transform? A visual introduction.},
  author = {3Blue1Brown},
  year = {2021},
  month = jan,
  url = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUNpyF58BY},
  urldate = {2021-01-21}
}

The issue is now that the bibliography does not show the url:

I know that there are fixes to this by like urls like this

howpublished = "\url{http://aiweb.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/content/bworld-robot-control-software/}"

But this is not feasible if your software automatically exports the url as above. But there must be some way to use the above entry with the URL in latex, as zotero exports URLs be default like this. Does anybody know how to make the above @misc entry display also the URL field?

Some details:

I use Zotero + BetterBibTex, which gives a .bib file with the above entry
The bibliography is generated via \bibliographystyle{alpha}
I use the url and hyperref packages

the alpha bibliographystyle is old and so doesn't support url fields. If you are forced to use it you will have to copy the url in the note or howpublished field. Better would be to switch to a newer style or to biblatex+biber. — Ulrike Fischer, Aug 29 '21 at 15:00
Off-topic: The sample entry you show happens to provide a perfect illustration of why one should never blindly trust information provided by Zotero, Google Books, or any other online source of bibliographic information: Distressingly often, information provided by these sources is just wrong. For instance, for the entry at hand, the year field should say 2018, not 2021, since the video was posted -- you guessed it -- in 2018. — Mico, Aug 29 '21 at 17:02
with the BBT zotero plugin you can have that url exported as url = {...} by zotero. — retorquere, Aug 29 '21 at 22:46

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 22 '23 at 07:09

With bibtex, you can use e.g. the alphaurl bibliography style (or plainurl, etc):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\begin{filecontents}{references.bib}
@misc{spielmandaniel-DiscrepancyTheoryRandomized-2021,
  title = {But what is the Fourier Transform? A visual introduction.},
  author = {3Blue1Brown},
  year = {2021},
  month = jan,
  url = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUNpyF58BY},
  urldate = {2021-01-21}
}
\end{filecontents}
\begin{document}
The reference: \cite{spielmandaniel-DiscrepancyTheoryRandomized-2021}
\bibliographystyle{alphaurl}
\bibliography{references}
\end{document}

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 29 '21 at 15:02

I wasn't able to find the bibliography style alpha. But the below code

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\begin{filecontents}{references.bib}
@misc{spielmandaniel-DiscrepancyTheoryRandomized-2021,
  title = {But what is the Fourier Transform? A visual introduction.},
  author = {3Blue1Brown},
  year = {2021},
  month = jan,
  url = {https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spUNpyF58BY},
  urldate = {2021-01-21}
}
\end{filecontents}
\usepackage[style=alphabetic]{biblatex} 
\bibliography{references}
\begin{document}
\title{The Title}
\author{The Author}
\maketitle
The reference: \cite{spielmandaniel-DiscrepancyTheoryRandomized-2021}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

produces the following result

on my TeX distribution.

The alpha bibliography style has been around since at least the early 1980s. — Mico, Aug 29 '21 at 15:57

Make \url{} entry visible in bibliography

2 Answers2