[Tex/LaTex] Citing a report with an institutional author

bibliographies

How would you commonly register a report from an institution in Biblatex like the following:

@Report{OUNHCHR2014,
  Title                    = {The right to privacy in the digital age},
  Author                   = {{Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights}},
  Date                     = {2014-06-30},
  Institution              = {Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights},
  Type                     = {Annual report of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and reports of the Office of the High Commissioner and the Secretary-General},
  Year                     = {2014},
  Location                 = {Geneva, Switzerland},
  Number                   = {A/HRC/27/37},
  Version                  = {2014-06-30}
}

Should the issuing institution go in the Author or the Institution field, or both (as per my example)? Or is this more a question of personal preference or the citation style used?

Best Answer

The authoritative document is probably

Garner, Diane L., and Diane H. Smith. The Complete Guide to Citing Government Documents: A Manual for Writers and Librarians. 1984.

I am not able to understand if the document you want to cite is

  • an official record,
  • a resolution,
  • a masthead (formerly mimeographed) document,
  • none of the above.

Depending on that answer, the library of Mc Master University and the United Nations Editorial Manual Online gives recommendations. For instance, for a Masthead document :

Name of main U.N. body, session (if one). Subsidiary body, session (if one). Title spacer(Document number). day month year of publication. (Document type i.e. Masthead or spacerMimeo). (Notes,i.e. microform collection note).

In the Brief Guide to Citing Government Publications of the University of Memphis, and in the How to cite OUN documents of the Bournemouth University, the do not mention anything that could correspond to your institution field.

You should probably also have a look at that source to make up your mind, but I would say that :

tl;dr: Surprisingly enough, I would leave the institution field empty and gives as an author {{U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights}}.

I think the United Nations Editorial Manual Online is the best resource to find your answer.

But I'm afraid some tweaking might be necessary for some styles.

(As a side not, I would add an url field pointing to http://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/DigitalAge/Pages/DigitalAgeIndex.aspx in your entry.)

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