How to change text color a particular reference in the bibliography in latex? (using ieee transactions bibliography style)

I found a simple - and totally hackish - way to color specific items.

Just find in the resulting file the last thing written in the reference you want to color and put a \color{black} after it, so everything after the reference will not be painted by a different color.

There are two versions of this trick:

1. Put \color{blue} after the first subitem of your reference and \color{black} after the last one. In your case, the first subitem is the author and the last is the year, so your bibfile will looks like this (P.s.: I added another reference to test the effect):

   @article{fuente, 
     author = {D. de la Fuente and J.G. Castaño and M. Morcillo}, 
     title = {Long-term atmospheric corrosion of zinc}, 
     journal = {Corrosion Science}, 
     volume = {49}, 
     year = {2007}, 
     pages = {1420–1436},
   }
   @article{test2, 
     author = {Zhu Zimmermann}, 
     title = {The glory of the letter Z}, 
     journal = {Alphanumeric Characters}, 
     volume = {99}, 
     year = {1999}, 
     pages = {199-299},
   }
   @article{nature, 
     author = {\color{blue}Rosa Rademakers and Manuela Neumann and Ian R. Mackenzie}, 
     title = {Advances in understanding the molecular basis of frontotemporal dementia - elongated title}, 
     journal = {Nature Reviews Neurology}, 
     volume = {8}, 
     year = {2012\color{black}}, 
     pages = {423-434}, 
     doi = {10.1038/nrneurol.2012.117},
   }
   

   And your result will be this:

• Advantages: you don't need to test for the string content, so you can easily apply in many unrelated items.
• Drawbacks: the numbering will NOT be painted along with the reference

---

If you need the number to have the same color, you can try this:

2. Don't put the \color{blue} in the first subitem of the reference you want to color, but instead in the last subitem of the reference immediately above your reference - in the resulting file, NOT in the bib file. This way, the number will be painted together with the text. This will be your bibfile:

   @article{fuente, 
     author = {D. de la Fuente and J.G. Castaño and M. Morcillo}, 
     title = {Long-term atmospheric corrosion of zinc}, 
     journal = {Corrosion Science}, 
     volume = {49}, 
     year = {2007\color{blue}}, 
     pages = {1420–1436},
   }
   @article{test2, 
     author = {Zhu Zimmermann}, 
     title = {The glory of the letter Z}, 
     journal = {Alphanumeric Characters}, 
     volume = {99}, 
     year = {1999}, 
     pages = {199-299},
   }
   @article{nature, 
     author = {Rosa Rademakers and Manuela Neumann and Ian R. Mackenzie}, 
     title = {Advances in understanding the molecular basis of frontotemporal dementia - elongated title}, 
     journal = {Nature Reviews Neurology}, 
     volume = {8}, 
     year = {2012\color{black}}, 
     pages = {423-434}, 
     doi = {10.1038/nrneurol.2012.117},
   }
   

   And here is the result:

• Advantages: the numbering will be painted along with the reference
• Drawbacks: items are not independent of the others, so if you add another item you may need to change where you put the \color{blue}.

\color{xxx} is a switch that change the color of the text, and it applies to the text following it (in a group). However, \bibitem does not set a group. This is way the color is propagated to the item following the entry where the color is set.

Here is a simple hack to that achieve the result of the OP (it uses the toolbox package, i.e., \usepackage{etoolbox})

\let\mybibitem\bibitem
\renewcommand{\bibitem}[1]{%
  \ifstrequal{#1}{nature}
    {\color{blue}\mybibitem{#1}}
    {\color{black}\mybibitem{#1}}%
}