[Tex/LaTex] How to cite OMG specifications

Question

I have to cite several OMG standards and specifications in a paper, such as MOF, UML, etc. What's the best BibTeX entry format to do so? These are not articles or conference papers. They are not exactly books, as they are not printed for publishing. They are also not exactly technical reports, since that the OMG does not have any other sort of publications. The "misc" type seems, however, somewhat demeaning for widely-adopted standards.

What sort of BibTeX entry, and with what fields, have you used to cite OMG specs (if you ever had to)?

Answer 1

If it neither has an ISBN nor appears in a series with an ISSN, then it falls within the scope of what Chicago calls "informally published materials", which are, overall, not so well handled by Bibtex.

The downside of using the @misc entry type is that institution isn't a recognised field key for that entry type in the default Bibtex styles, so you have to use the howpublished kludge. I would go for @techreport, which does have the required documentation. You should be prepared to change the representation to get the output you want though.

I note that Jabref has a custom @standard entry type for the internal representation of these kinds of entry, which it translates as appropriate to the bibliography style you want to use in a particular article.