[YLUG] LaTeX query: Abbreviating journal titles with BibTeX

[Richard G. Clegg]

Roger Leigh wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> Given a .bib file with full journal titles, is there any way to
> convert the full titles to abbreviated titles?
> 
> For example: "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the
> United States of America" to "Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A".
> 
> This could be in a separate file somewhere to do the lookups.  The
> .bib is automatically generated, so I don't want to directly edit it
> in place if I can help it--I'd prefer for the replacement to be done
> either when running bibtex or latex.
> 
> I'm already using by own custom natbib style, so I could alter that if
> that is a possibility.

I would guess the only way to do it is to add a field to each entry,
called, say, ABBRJOURNAL and then hack the bst file to use that instead.
That way you could change between the full version and the short version
just by changing the bibliography style.

-- 
Richard G. Clegg,
Dept of Elec. Eng.,
University College London
http://www.richardclegg.org/