[Tex/LaTex] Bad bibtex entries using InBook

bibliographiesbibtexcitingwarnings

I got several of the following warning:

Warning–can't use both author and editor fields in …

These were @InBook entries. It was possible to correct them by

  • using @InCollection instead
  • changing chapter to title
  • and title to booktitle

Was this an ugly hack, or something has changed over the versions of BibTeX?

I use version 0.99d .

I copied the BibTeX entries from various sources, including the ACM Digital Library and the Springer website. Might they think something different as correct BibTeX than my implementation?

EDIT minimal working examples:

The first is foot.tex:

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper, twocolumn]{article}

\title{Paper}
\author{Gergely}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\cite{Winskel:1995:MC:218623.218630}

\bibliographystyle{abbrv}
\bibliography{foot}

\end{document}

and foot.bib:

@inbook{Winskel:1995:MC:218623.218630,
 author = {Winskel, Glynn and Nielsen, Mogens},
 chapter  = {Models for Concurrency},
 title = {Handbook of Logic in Computer Science (Vol. 4)},
 editor = {Abramsky, S. and Gabbay, Dov M. and Maibaum, T. S. E.},
 year = {1995},
 isbn = {0-19-853780-8},
 pages = {1--148},
 numpages = {148},
 url = {http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=218623.218630},
 acmid = {218630},
 publisher = {Oxford University Press},
 address = {Oxford, UK},
}

On this, BibTeX gives the warning

Warning–can't use both author and editor fields in Winskel:1995:MC:218623.218630

I changed this as I have written above to have boot.tex:

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper, twocolumn]{article}

\title{Paper}
\author{Gergely}

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\cite{Winskel:1995:MC:218623.218630}

\bibliographystyle{abbrv}
\bibliography{boot}

\end{document}

and boot.bib:

@incollection{Winskel:1995:MC:218623.218630,
 author = {Winskel, Glynn and Nielsen, Mogens},
 title  = {Models for Concurrency},
 booktitle = {Handbook of Logic in Computer Science (Vol. 4)},
 editor = {Abramsky, S. and Gabbay, Dov M. and Maibaum, T. S. E.},
 year = {1995},
 isbn = {0-19-853780-8},
 pages = {1--148},
 numpages = {148},
 url = {http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=218623.218630},
 acmid = {218630},
 publisher = {Oxford University Press},
 address = {Oxford, UK},
}

This does not give any warning.

The calls were pdflatex foot and bibtex foot and similarly for the boot files.

What is the correct way of citing such an item?

Best Answer

The inbook entry type is designed for referring to a chapter of a book with a single author or set of authors. This is why you receive the warning in your first example: you can't have both an author and an editor field in the inbook type since only one is assumed. In other words, each chapter of the book is by that editor or author.

If the chapters of the book have different authors then you should use the incollection entry type not the inbook type. This entry type allows for both an author and an editor, and also has separate fields for title and booktitle as you did in your second example.

Online bibtex entries are known to be very variable in their accuracy and adherence to proper bibtex requirements.

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