[Tex/LaTex] Should I use the article entry in Bibtex when the work is unpublished

bibtex

Looking at this page about Bibtex I see that the article entry should be used when the work has been published in a journal or in a magazine.

Suppose that I have a small manual/guide, which probably has not been published, but which totally looks like an article (in the classic Latex meaning), then I can't use the article entry in Bibtex because the journal is a mandatory field.

What kind of entry should one use in these cases?

Best Answer

Since you're looking to reference a manual, you may want to look into the @manual entry type. Its only required field is title, and it has the following optional fields: author, organization, address, edition, month, year, note, and key. (Any fields that are neither required nor optional will be ignored.)

You may also want to consider the entry type @unpublished; its required fields are author, title, and note, and its optional fields are month, year, and key.

If that doesn't work for you, you may want to look into BibTeX's catch-all entry type, called @misc: It has no required fields at all, and its optional fields are author, title, howpublished, month, year, note, and key.

At any rate, the @article entry type won't work for your entry because one of its required fields is (as you've already discovered) journal. If one omits the journal field from an entry of type @article, BibTeX will generate either a warning or an error message about the missing field.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to cite an article from Arxiv using bibtex

It's also worth mentioning Biblatex, which has proper support for eprints with all styles. For arXiv, specifically, you can use

archivePrefix = {arXiv},
       eprint = {0902.0885},
 primaryClass = {quant-ph},

for a new-style eprint, or

archivePrefix = {arXiv},
   eprint = {quant-ph/0401062},

for an old-style eprint.

Both entries were taken directly from the NASA ADS database, clicking on "Export". The journal field you left empty, except of course if has actually been published elsewhere. As for the template, it depends on the style you are using. I use @article with the style biblatex-phys, and the formatting is good, but with the default style it produces crap if journal is empty. In this case you can use @misc and @online, with similar results. You should avoid @unpublished, however, as it hides the eprint number.

EDIT: Updated to take into account the comments.

[Tex/LaTex] Bibtex entry to cite an article with unknown author

@misc{tfsp,
key={Tax-free},
title={Tax-free savings push},
howpublished={Sunday Mail},
year={4 April 1999},
pages={3},
}

In the @misc type all fields are optional. Use a suitable key field.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to cite an article from Arxiv using bibtex

[Tex/LaTex] Bibtex entry to cite an article with unknown author

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