Disabling URLs in bibliography

If you use biblatex, there's an option called url which can be set to url = false. There are also isbn, doi etc., similar options. If you are not using biblatex. I don't think there's an easy way get what you want. The traditional bibtex uses a very different language to define the bib style.

I guess you use the IEEEtran bibliography style coming along with the IEEEtran document class. You can easily adapt this style to ignore any url fields in your bibliographic database. To this end, copy the file IEEEtran.bst to your working directory (if it isn't already there) and apply the following patch:

--- IEEEtran.bst.orig
+++ IEEEtran.bst
@@ -403,7 +403,6 @@
   default.ALTinterwordstretchfactor 'ALTinterwordstretchfactor :=
   default.name.format.string 'name.format.string :=
   default.name.latex.cmd 'name.latex.cmd :=
-  default.name.url.prefix 'name.url.prefix :=
 }


@@ -1080,7 +1079,7 @@
   if$
   "\begin{thebibliography}{"  longest.label  * "}" *
   write$ newline$
-  "\providecommand{\url}[1]{#1}"
+  "\def\url#1{}"
   write$ newline$
   "\csname url@samestyle\endcsname"
   write$ newline$

I have a cheeky solution to this. I grep "url" in my bibtex file with the invert switch -v -- in effect, it gives me a new bibtex file without any url data. In other words,

grep -v "url =" file.bib > newfile.bib