The Elements of Citation
The primary elements of a bibliographic reference are the same for most styles of documentation, although the order in which they are presented may vary. These elements include the name of the authors, the title, the name of publication, the publisher’s name, the date of publication, and a designation of the location, or page number, of a reference. Many styles also include a designation of the publication medium. The Online! A reference guide to using Internet resources and B. Davis Schwartz Memorial Library at Long Island University provides some examples.
Bibliography Format
An example of basice format are:
Authors’ Name.
Title of document.
Name of Publication
Volume (number),
Page number.
Place of publication [if applicable],
Publisher’s name [if applicable],
Year.
An Easy Guide to BibTeX
Using BibTeX can help to handle the references and citations in a consistent way. This program allow us just supply all the relevant information about references in a .bib file without regard to ordering or style. According to the chosen bibliographic style, BibTeX formats all citations and reference entries.
In addition, you don’t have to sweat all the font, punctuation and ordering details. The reference/bibliography section usually appears at the end of an publication. Specify the style and location of the bibliography in your LaTeX document as follows:
bibliographystyle{xxx}
bibliography{yyy}
- The “xxx” is a style name –plain or abbrv or siam or alpha or any of dozens of other available styles.
- The “yyy” is the name of the .bib file (yyy.bib) containing the reference database.
A Simple BibTeX Database File
Here is a simple .bib file:
| @STRING{IEEE_PerCom = {{IEEE} Pervasive Computing}} @STRING{CHI03 = {{CHI ‘03}: {CHI ‘03} extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems}} |
| @ARTICLE{Yu:06, author = {Zhiwen Yu and Xingshe Zhou and Daqing Zhang}, title = {Supporting Context-Aware Media Recommendations for Smart Phones}, journal = IEEE_PerCom, year = {2006}, volume = {5}, pages = {68 — 75}, number = {3}, month = {July — September}, address = {Los Alamitos, CA, USA}, doi = {http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/MPRV.2006.61}, issn = {1536-1268}, publisher = {IEEE Computer Society} } |
| @INPROCEEDINGS{Sohn:03, author = {Timothy Sohn and Anind Dey}, title = {{iCAP}: an informal tool for interactive prototyping of context-aware applications}, booktitle = CHI03, year = {2003}, pages = {974–975}, address = {Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA}, month = {05–10 April}, publisher = {{ACM} Press}, isbn = {1-58113-637-4} } |
Compiling the Document and Bibliography
If the reference change, (i.e. it’s not necessary to repeat the following commands very time) use the following commands:
| Step | Command | Description |
| 1 | latex YourDocument | creates .aux file which includes keywords of any citations |
| 2 | bibtex YourDocument | uses the .aux file to extract cited publications from the database in the .bib file, formats them according to the indicated style, and puts the results into in a .bbl file |
| 3 | latex YourDocument | inserts appropriate reference indicators at each point of citation, according to the indicated bibliography style |
| 4 | latex YourDocument | refines citation references and other cross-references, page formatting and page numbers |
An Easy BibTeX Guide
- Use “and” to separate multiple authors, e.g., author = "J. Smith and E. B. Johnson and W. Strunk Jr.". An online help on BibTeX names contains detailed description.
- To handle the ccented characters, you must place the entire accented character in braces. For example, either `G{\”o}del’ or `G{\”{o}}del’, but neither `{G{\”{o}}del}’ nor `{G\”{o}del}’.
- STANDARD ENTRY TYPES:
- @article
- An article from a journal or magazine. Required fields: author, title, journal, year. Optional fields: volume, number, pages, month, note.
- @book
- A book with an explicit publisher. Required fields: author or editor, title, publisher, year. Optional fields: volume or number, series, address, edition, month, note.
- @booklet
- A work that is printed and bound, but without a named publisher or sponsoring institution. Required field: title. Optional fields: author, howpublished, address, month, year, note.
- @conference
- The same as inproceedings
- @inbook
- A part of a book, which may be a chapter (or section or whatever) and/or a range of pages. Required fields: author or editor, title, chapter and/or pages, publisher, year. Optional fields: volume or number, series, type, address, edition, month, note.
- @incollection
- A part of a book having its own title. Required fields: author, title, booktitle, publisher, year. Optional fields: editor, volume or number, series, type, chapter, pages, address, edition, month, note.
- @inproceedings
- An article in a conference proceedings. Required fields: author, title, booktitle, year. Optional fields: editor, volume or number, series, pages, address, month, organization, publisher, note.
- @manual
- Technical documentation. Required field: title. Optional fields: author, organization, address, edition, month, year, note.
- @mastersthesis
- A Master’s thesis. Required fields: author, title, school, year. Optional fields: type, address, month, note.
- @misc
- Use this type when nothing else fits. Required fields: none. Optional fields: author, title, howpublished, month, year, note.
- @phdthesis
- A PhD thesis. Required fields: author, title, school, year. Optional fields: type, address, month, note.
- @proceedings
- The proceedings of a conference. Required fields: title, year. Optional fields: editor, volume or number, series, address, month, organization, publisher, note.
- @techreport
- A report published by a school or other institution, usually numbered within a series. Required fields: author, title, institution, year. Optional fields: type, number, address, month, note.
- @unpublished
- A document having an author and title, but not formally published. Required fields: author, title, note. Optional fields: month, year.
- STANDARD FIELDS
- address
- Usually the address of the publisher or other type of institution. For major publishing houses, van Leunen recommends omitting the information entirely. For small publishers, on the other hand, you can help the reader by giving the complete address.
- annote
- An annotation. It is not used by the standard bibliography styles, but may be used by others that produce an annotated bibliography.
- author
- The name(s) of the author(s), in the format described in the LaTeX book.
- booktitle
- Title of a book, part of which is being cited. See the LaTeX book for how to type titles. For book entries, use the title field instead.
- chapter
- A chapter (or section or whatever) number.
- crossref
- The database key of the entry being cross referenced. Any fields that are missing from the current record are inherited from the field being cross referenced.
- edition
- The edition of a book—for example, “Second”. This should be an ordinal, and should have the first letter capitalized, as shown here; the standard styles convert to lower case when necessary.
- editor
- Name(s) of editor(s), typed as indicated in the LaTeX book. If there is also an author field, then the editor field gives the editor of the book or collection in which the reference appears.
- howpublished
- How something strange has been published. The first word should be capitalized.
- institution
- The sponsoring institution of a technical report.
- journal
- A journal name. Abbreviations are provided for many journals.
- key
- Used for alphabetizing, cross referencing, and creating a label when the “author” information is missing. This field should not be confused with the key that appears in the cite command and at the beginning of the database entry.
- month
- The month in which the work was published or, for an unpublished work, in which it was written. You should use the standard three-letter abbreviation, as described in Appendix B.1.3 of the LaTeX book.
- note
- Any additional information that can help the reader. The first word should be capitalized.
- number
- The number of a journal, magazine, technical report, or of a work in a series. An issue of a journal or magazine is usually identified by its volume and number; the organization that issues a technical report usually gives it a number; and sometimes books are given numbers in a named series.
- organization
- The organization that sponsors a conference or that publishes a manual.
- pages
- One or more page numbers or range of numbers, such as 42--111 or 7,41,73--97 or 43+ (the `+‘ in this last example indicates pages following that don’t form a simple range). To make it easier to maintain Scribe-compatible databases, the standard styles convert a single dash (as in 7-33) to the double dash used in TeX to denote number ranges (as in 7--33).
- publisher
- The publisher’s name.
- school
- The name of the school where a thesis was written.
- series
- The name of a series or set of books. When citing an entire book, the the title field gives its title and an optional series field gives the name of a series or multi-volume set in which the book is published.
- title
- The work’s title, typed as explained in the LaTeX book.
- type
- The type of a technical report—for example, “Research Note”.
- volume
- The volume of a journal or multi-volume book.
- year
- The year of publication or, for an unpublished work, the year it was written. Generally it should consist of four numerals, such as 1984
BibTeX References
- Designing BibTeX Styles by Oren Patashnik
- BibTeX online help
