Directory macros/latex/contrib/biblatex2bibitem

The Problem Being Solved

Some journals accept the reference list only as \bibitems. If you use BibTeX, there is no problem: just paste the content of the .bbl file into your document. However, there were no out-of-the-box way to do the same for biblatex, and you had to struggle with searching appropriate .bst files, or formatting your reference list by hand, or something like that.

Now you haven't to.

Usage

In preamble, after the biblatex package is loaded via \usepackage[...]{biblatex}:

\usepackage{biblatex2bibitem}

At the very end of document:

\printbibitembibliography

The desired bibitems will be written directly to the PDF file.

When it's time to switch to bibitems (e.g. before sending the paper to the journal), just copy them directly from the pdf into your .tex file, remove biblatex commands and (probably) load the cite package.

Disclaimer

This package itself is a hack. Moreover, it is (as for 02 March 2020) under rather an active development. New features may appear and disappear, and the API may be unstable. Thus, you may want to download biblatex2bibitem.sty and keep it near your article instead of (or in addition to) having installing it system-wide.

Tips

Linebreaks in generated bibliography

You can pass block=par option to biblatex like that:

\usepackage[block=par,...]{biblatex}

but not like that (see also https://github.com/plk/biblatex/issues/968):

\printbibliography[block=par,env=bibitembibliography]

It will add linebreaks in generated bibitems and make the code a bit more beautiful :)

(Un)desired spaces

If you really want to have a space after the title of an e.g. an article, just

\renewcommand{\ignorespacesaftertitlecase}{}

bibitem separators

By default, generated bibitems are separated by a line with an empty pair of curly braces on it to make the reading of the code easier. You can tweak this by e.g.

\renewcommand{\printgeneratedbibitemseparator}{\ttfamily\{\}\\}

(for putting all the bibitems into monotype font) or e.g.

\renewcommand{\printgeneratedbibitemseparator}{}

(for disabling "blank" lines but not linebreaks when copying).

Other redefinable commands

Don't forget about \makeatletter and \makeatother!

• \print@begin@thebibliography - default: \textbackslash begin\{thebibliography\}\{99\}

• \print@end@thebibliography - default: \textbackslash end\{thebibliography\}

• \print@bibitem@command - default: \textbackslash bibitem

See also

• https://github.com/plk/biblatex/issues/783

• https://github.com/plk/biblatex/issues/292

• https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/12175/biblatex-submitting-to-a-journal (a hopeless discussion)

• https://github.com/odomanov/biblatex-gost/issues/20 (in Russian)

Repostories

• CTAN

• GitLab

License

LPPL - LaTeX Project Public License v1.3c+, DFSG compat.

Authors

• Nikolai Avdeev aka @nickkolok

• @odomanov