How to manually equalize columns in an IEEE paper if using BibTex

There are three good answers to this question.

• Use the unsrt bibliography style, if you're happy with its formatting otherwise
• Use the makebst (link) tool to design your own bibliography style

And my personal recommendation:

• Use the biblatex package (link). It's the most complete and flexible bibliography tool in the LaTeX world.

Using biblatex, you'd write something like

\documentclass[12pt]{article}
\usepackage[sorting=none]{biblatex}
\bibliography{journals,phd-references} % Where journals.bib and phd-references.bib are BibTeX databases
\begin{document}
\cite{robertson2007}
\cite{earnshaw1842}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

OK, this is well outside my previous experience with BibTeX, but looking at the file, I get the impression that the name.or.dash section is replacing the name with a dash if it's the same as the previous one. I suggest trying replacing this code:

FUNCTION {name.or.dash}
{ 's :=
   oldname empty$
     { s 'oldname := s }
     { s oldname =
         { "\rule[.6ex]{3em}{.05ex}"}
         { s 'oldname := s }
       if$
     }
   if$
}

with this:

FUNCTION {name.or.dash}
{
}

If my understanding of the syntax is correct, this should simply remove the comparison and optional change, and leave the name as you want it.

A slightly tidier approach might be to take out the calls to name.or.dash in the places which you don't want them. That will give you more flexibility about whether you want a dash in place of, for example, a repeated book name.