[Tex/LaTex] How to cite an article from the workshop of a conference in BibLaTeX (engineering)

biblatexbibliographies

In the bibliography of my electrical engineering PhD thesis, I have some entries for articles which were presented orally in the workshop of a conference (but not in the main conference track). I would like to cite both the name of the workshop, and the name of the main conference. I'm using BibLaTeX and classicthesis. So far, I used @InProceedings entries with the following fields (example):

@InProceedings{citation_key,
    title = article_title,
    author = list_of_authors,
    booktitle = name_of_main_conference,
    series = name_of_workshop,
    year = the_year,
}

In particular, I wonder if I'm using the booktitle and series fields correctly according to the "convention", if there is one.

EDIT: for example, I have defined the following.

@InProceedings{smith:2016:eclws,
    author = {Smith, John},
    booktitle = {European Conference on Life},
    series = {Workshop on the Meaning of 42},
    title = {{Great Article}},
    year = {2016}
}

which is typeset as follows, using BibLaTeX style=ieee:

[12] J. Smith, “Great Article”, in European Conference on Life, ser. Workshop on the Meaning of 42, 2016.

I don't particularly like the ser. part, hence my original question.

Best Answer

Technically, @inproceedings is only the correct entry type if the article did in fact appear in the official conference proceedings. You can of course still (ab)use it.

@inproceedings{smith:2016:eclws,
  author    = {Smith, Jane},
  title     = {{Great Article}},
  year      = {2016},
  maintitle = {European Conference on Life},
  booktitle = {Workshop on the Meaning of 42},
}

You could use booktitle and maintitle to format the conference and workshop information as shown above, or booktitle and booksubtitle as shown below

  booktitle    = {European Conference on Life},
  booksubtitle = {Workshop on the Meaning of 42},

I prefer the maintitle/booktitle approach, but that is probably a matter of taste.

If the conference name and workshop make it not significantly easier to find the article and you don't have to include them for other reasons (you might want to show them in a CV, grant application, ...), you could also drop the info and only show what is really important to locate the article. If it has a URL,

@online{smith:2016:eclws,
  author    = {Smith, Jane},
  title     = {{Great Article}},
  year      = {2016},
  url       = {http://example.ed/~smith/great2006},
  urldate   = {2017-07-08},
}

might well be enough.

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