BibTeX
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Description
BibTeX is a program and file format designed by Oren Patashnik and Leslie
Lamport in 1985 for the LaTeX document preparation system. The format is
entirely character based, so it can be used by any program (although the
standard character set for accents is TeX). It is field (tag) based and the
BibTeX program will ignore unknown fields, so it is expandable. It is
probably the most common format for bibliographies on the Internet.
References
Software Support
The BibTeX program uses style files, a list of
citations from LaTeX, and a BibTeX database to create a LaTeX file listing
the cited references.
Dana Jacobsen maintains a list of
some BibTeX tools.
If you're looking for BibTeX for the Mac, Vince Darley has done a port of BibTeX to
the Mac.
bp
and BibDB both fully support BibTeX.
Examples
@article{Gettys90,
author = {Jim Gettys and Phil Karlton and Scott McGregor},
title = {The {X} Window System, Version 11},
journal = {Software Practice and Experience},
volume = {20},
number = {S2},
year = {1990},
abstract = {A technical overview of the X11 functionality. This is an update
of the X10 TOG paper by Scheifler \& Gettys.}
}
Common problems
- The original documents specified a large number of field names, but
there are many common items that are not listed. A list of some of the
ones people have added are below.
- When using BibTeX, the interaction between names and accenting is
somewhat tricky. You should use `G{\"o}del' or `G{\"{o}}del', and not
`{G{\"{o}}del}' or `{G\"{o}del}'.
- The BibTeX program is written, as is all TeX, using static data
structures, and the maximum length of any one string is by default 1000
characters. It is not uncommon for fields like abstract and contents to
overflow this buffer. Solutions to this include
- change the source code to BibTeX (I've changed mine to 3000)
- use \include{file.tex} to include an external
file
- split the field into field1, field2, ...
Format Description
Special features
The @STRING command is used to define abbreviations for use by
BibTeX. The command @string{jgg1 = "Journal of Gnats and Gnus,
Series~1"} defines 'jgg1' to be the abbreviation for the string "Journal
of Gnats and Gnus, Series~1". Any reference outside of quotes or braces to
jgg1 will be filled in with the full string.
The @PREAMBLE command is used to define formatter code that will
be output directly to the bbl file produced by the BibTeX program.
This usually consists of LaTeX macros. It is unclear what one should do with
the fields when converting to a format that does not use TeX.
The @COMMENT command lets you put any text inside it. It isn't
really necessary, since BibTeX will ignore any text that isn't inside an
entry. However, you can not have an @ character outside of an item.
Standard entry types
- @article
- An article from a journal or magazine.
- @book
- A book with an explicit publisher.
- @booklet
- A work that is printed and bound, but without a named publisher or
sponsoring institution.
- @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.
- @incollection
- A part of a book having its own title.
- @inproceedings
- An article in a conference proceedings.
- @manual
- Technical documentation.
- @mastersthesis
- A Master's thesis.
- @misc
- Use this type when nothing else fits.
- @phdthesis
- A PhD thesis.
- @proceedings
- The proceedings of a conference.
- @techreport
- A report published by a school or other institution, usually numbered
within a series.
- @unpublished
- A document having an author and title, but not formally
published.
Other entry types
Using these entry types is not recommended, but they might occur in some
bibliographies.
- @collection
- A collection of works. The same as proceedings
- @patent
- A patent.
Standard fields
For now I'm going to be lazy and give you what Oren Patashnik wrote about the
fields. I'll redo this sometime, including references to how each field
should be formatted.
- 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, although the standard styles can handle any
year whose last four nonpunctuation characters are numerals,
such as `\hbox{(about 1984)}'.
Other fields
BibTeX is extremely popular, and many people have used it to store
information. Here is a list of some of the more common fields:
- affiliation
- The authors affiliation.
- abstract
- An abstract of the work.
- contents
- A Table of Contents
- copyright
- Copyright information.
- ISBN
- The International Standard Book Number.
- ISSN
- The International Standard Serial Number. Used to identify a
journal.
- keywords
- Key words used for searching or possibly for annotation.
- language
- The language the document is in.
- location
- A location associated with the entry, such as the city in which a
conference took place.
- LCCN
- The Library of Congress Call Number. I've also seen this as
lib-congress.
- mrnumber
- The Mathematical Reviews number.
- price
- The price of the document.
- size
- The physical dimensions of a work.
- URL
- The WWW Universal Resource Locator that points to the item being
referenced. This often is used for technical reports to point to the
ftp site where the postscript source of the report is located.
[Back to Formats]
12 December 1996
Dana
Jacobsen
dana@acm.org