The ToC Eprint package

What are "eprint identifiers?"

ToC bibliography items may include eprint identifiers which are links to online archives where (variants of) the paper or related information can be found. Let's take, for instance, bibliography item [1] in ToC, Volume 1, Article 2:

S. Aaronson: Quantum lower bound for the collision problem. In Proc. 34th ACM STOC, pp. 635-642, 2002. STOC:509907.509999, arXiv:quant-ph/0111102.

In this example, the string STOC:509907.509999 represents a link to the ACM Portal where the abstract of this article can be found. If you or your institution subscribes to the ACM digital library, you will be able to download the full text of the article from the ACM Portal. The string arXiv:quanth-ph/0111102 represents a link to the arXiv archive where this article can also be found. Since arXiv content is open access, all readers can access the full text of the article there.
Click here for the list of archives currently supported by the ToC eprint style eprint.sty.

Why not just DOIs?

DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers), administered by doi.org, are unique codes assigned to many online documents. Why do we need other identifiers? Some of the reasons:

The fields supported by the ToC BibTeX style file tocplain.bst include a "doi" field. An entry like 
     doi = {mydoientry}
will link the text "doi:mydoientry" to the corresponding document.

How does one generate the eprint links?

eprint uses the hyperref package to generate the links, so your LaTeX installation must include the hyperref package.
Place the files tocplain.bst and eprint.sty in the same directory as your LaTeX source file (or in some other directory in your BibTeX and LaTeX search paths, respectively). If your BibTeX file is called "mybibfile.bib" then write
    \usepackage{eprint}
in the preamble of your LaTeX source file and
    \bibliographystyle{tocplain}
    \bibliography{mybibfile}
near the end of your LaTeX source file (where the bibliography of your article is supposed to appear).

Inside mybibfile.bib, introduce a field called "eprint":
    eprint = {id1, id2, ..., idk}
where id1, etc., are the eprint identifiers explained below.
Note. The tocplain BibTeX style parses this information and generates calls (in the .bbl file) to the epfmt macro defined in the eprint package. During the next run of LaTeX, the eprint package generates the clickable URLs.

Is the ToC eprint package compatible with arXiv's eprint support?

The "eprint" BibTeX field was originally introduced by arXiv. The ToC eprint package is an extension of arXiv's BibTeX support for an "eprint" field and is fully compatible with arXiv. The package was created by Murali Ganapathy and Alex Russell in coordination with the arXiv staff for use by ToC and is offered without charge to the community at large.

The format of the ToC eprint field

A ToC eprint entry is a comma seperated list of eprint identifiers. Each eprint identifier is of the form archive:identifier or of the form identifier. Here the identifier is assumed not to contain a colon, space, comma. Entries of the short form identifier are interpreted as arxiv:identifier. (This ensures backward compatibility.)

An archive is an alphabetic string. An identifier is any string composed of any characters other than colon, comma, or space. In particular it may contain letters (both cases), digits, punctuation marks. The "/" is interpreted by eprint.sty as a separator of two arguments.

For instance, the example above was generated from the following BibTeX item:

Many more examples can be found by clicking on the "Bibliography Source" of each published article.

How do I find the identifier for a supported archive?

Click here and then select your archive.

How does eprint.sty work?

eprint.sty defines a single user macro epfmt which takes two arguments, the archive and the identifier. In the example above, the BibTeX database had an entry like 

eprint = {stoc:509907.509999, quant-ph/0111102}
which gets translated to 
\epfmt{stoc}{509907.509999}, \epfmt{arxiv}{quant-ph/0111102}.
epfmt interprets "/" as an argument seperator and in turn calls 
\ep@stoc@one{509907.509999} and \ep@arxiv@two{quant-ph}{0111102}.
Now the macros ep@stoc@one and ep@arxiv@two, provided in eprint.sty, generate the actual links.

Can I add support for more archives?

First check here to see if your archive is already supported. If it is not supported, send a message to Email containing the link to the archive as well as the LaTeX code which transforms an identifier to a URL. Please begin the Subject line of your message by
      Subject: ToC eprint

Can one add eprint support to other BibTeX style files?

The style file tocplain.bst has been derived from the standard BibTeX style file plain.bst. We have not created the analogous extensions of unsrt.bst, srt.bst, alpha.bst, and other BibTeX style files, but such adaptations are possible and we hope someone will create them if and when our eprint style gains popularity.

How to create an HTML bibliography with eprint links?

One of ToC's new features is an HTML bibliography with eprint links. We expect other online publications to wish to emulate this feature. One caveat: the .bbl file created by BibTeX from a .bib file containing eprint fields cannot be processed by BibTeX2HTML. The way ToC solves this problem is by preprocessing the .bbl file before feeding it to BibTeX2HTML. For details, please write to Email .



Last updated August 3, 2005.