Section roman and section cross-reference arabic

The following minimal example updates refstepcounter in a way that re-stores @currentlabel using arabic rather than Roman specifically when the section counter is being stepped. Both subsections and subsubsections require similar treatment and have been added as well.

documentclass[journal]{IEEEtran} 

makeatletter
letoldrefstepcounterrefstepcounter
renewcommand{refstepcounter}[1]{%
  oldrefstepcounter{#1}% Regular refstepcounter
  ifnumpdfstrcmp{#1}{section}=0
    % Update @currentlabel for section to be arabic
    edef@currentlabel{arabic{section}}%
  else
    ifnumpdfstrcmp{#1}{subsection}=0
      % Update @currentlabel for subsection to match default + arabic section counter
      edef@currentlabel{arabic{section}-Alph{subsection}}%
    else
      ifnumpdfstrcmp{#1}{subsubsection}=0
        % Update @currentlabel to match default for subsubsection + arabic for section
        edef@currentlabel{arabic{section}-Alph{subsection}arabic{subsubsection}}%
      fi
    fi
  fi
}
makeatother

begin{document} 

Section~ref{sec-test} is correct.

section{My Test}label{sec-test}

end{document}

This has not been extensively tested and therefore comes with no guarantee.

The specification is quite bizarre: if a section is numbered “I” (with a Roman numeral), also cross-references should follow the scheme.

Anyway, it is quite easy to provide the required numbering scheme, because IEEEtran detaches title numbering from the related counter's representation: for the numbering of section it uses thesectiondis. Thus the following works.

documentclass[journal]{IEEEtran}

renewcommandthesection{arabic{section}}
renewcommandthesectiondis{Roman{section}.}

begin{document}

Section~ref{sec-test} is incorrect.

section{My Test}label{sec-test}

end{document}