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Conventions for BiBTeX files

This is a description of the conventions that .bib files must adhere to in order for the bibutils package to work optimally. Basically, all the standard types of entry (article, inproceedings, book, etc.) and all the standard fields (author, title, publisher, etc.) are supported by bibutils. Some of these fields are required for the correct operation of bibutils (see Section section Standard Fields Required in BiBTeX Files). In addition, some new fields which particular to bibutils can (and, in some cases, must) be added to the BiBTeX entries for full operation of bibutils. These new fields are described below. In particular, the main restriction is that typically every entry in the .bib file which is elligible to appear in the generated documents must contain the field butype. Also note that for the bibutils package to work the last field value in a given BiBTeX entry should not have a comma at the end.

The `butype` field

In order for the bibutils to work properly, publications must be correctly classified in the source .bib file using appropriate values of the butype field. The following general considerations apply:

The butype field will typically be the same as the BiBTeX type, i.e., Article, Book, InProceedings, etc. (except that it must always be written all in lowercase). However, there are some cases in which, in order to classify more clearly the type of publication, the value of butype to be used may differ from the BiBTeX type (see below for more details).
It is often the case that the BiBTeX file contains multiple entries for a given paper. For example, a short and a long version, or two entries with different keywords, for compatibility. In these cases, it is necessary to identify the entry whose data will appear in the output of bibutils. This version is identified in the bibtex file by the presence of a butype field. Entries without this field will be ignored by the automatic processing tools. Generally the entry with the most detailed information is the one in which this field is included. It is important to make sure that the butype field is present in only one entry for a given publication, since otherwise the publication will appear repeated in the output.

The following are the possible values for the butype field and their meaning:

Refereed/serious publications (the "real stuff"):

article
Only refereed articles published in a journal.
inproceedings
Only refereed articles published in conference proceedings.
book
Book with editor, including formal proceedings.
Unrefereed, but important publications:

mastersthesis
Master's thesis.
phdthesis
Ph.D. thesis.
incollection
Paper in book with editor.
proceedings
No need for publisher, etc. (e.g., workshop proceedings?).
workshop
Workshop papers. These have "inproceedings" bibtex type but "workshop" butype.
invited
Invited papers. These have "inproceedings" bibtex type but "invited" butype.
invitedtalk
Invited talks and tutorials at major conferences, when there is no paper associated with them (in that case they are "invited"). These have "inproceedings" bibtex type but "invitedtalk" butype.
Unrefereed, miscellaneous publications:

techreport
Technical Report.
manual
A user's manual.
Other publications:

misc
Accepts anything (e.g., internet postings).
unpublished
Note required! For manuscripts...

Recommendations for the `author` field

In order to ensure correct parsing of authors and sorting of papers:

Use braces around compound author names such as {Garc\\'{\\i}a de la Banda}.
author names Use "M. Hermenegildo and F. Bueno" rather than "M. Hermenegildo, F. Bueno" or "Manuel Hermenegildo and Francisco Bueno".

Other bibutils-specific BiBTeX fields

butopics = < list of topics>: This field is needed in order to be able generate lists of publications classified by topics. It contains one or more atoms (separated by commas) describing topics. These atoms are related to the textual descritpion of the topics themselves by a topics database. See the description of the pl2pubsbytopic script for details. Note for CLIP group: the CLIP topics database is in /home/clip/PlDbs/clip_topics.pl.
url = <url>: An online copy of the paper (or other information on it) is available at location <url>. Note that it is normally not required to include this field: if a PDF file for the paper named keyword.pdf (or a postscript file named keyword.ps or keyword.ps.gz), is available in a certain directory of papers (given to the script upon startup). keyword is the keyword used in the bib file (i.e., the same used in @cite{}/\\cite{} commands). Thus, url normally only needs to be used for exceptions to this rule. A page describing the paper may be available in keyword.html.
bookurl = <url>: Contains a pointer to some WWW accessible document related with the collection (e.g., online proceedings, description of conference, etc.).

Other fields specific to the CLIP group

This section lists some other conventions that BiBTeX files that are local to the CLIP group should adhere to.

papercopy = <number>: Means that a paper copy of the paper exists in the CLIP lab library, filed under that number.
projects = <project names>: Projects acknowledged in the paper. Used in the generation of publication lists for project reports. (Only bother including for "good" pubs?)
comment = <text>: Since CLIP .bib files are processed by several utilities, any comments should be inside a comment field and should not appear anywhere else in the .bib file.

The following are necessary for the somewhat bizarre format of the department annual research report, and some weird CV formats:

publisher_location = <city>: For article butype. City where the publishing ocurred (!).
paper_presentation_city = <city>: For inproceedings butype. City where the conference was held.
paper_presentation_country = <country>: For inproceedings butype. Country where the conference was held.

The following BiBTeX types do not appear as useful as others and they are not used in the CLIP .bib files:

booklet: Brochure. Small book. Editor not needed.
conference: This seems to mean a talk (?).
inbook: Paper in book (w/chapter), but with no editor (?).

Standard Fields Required in BiBTeX Files

The following is a (probably incomplete) table of the (traditional) fields that are required for each type of BiBTeX entry so that most of the bibutils will work well:

A=article       - I=inproceedings - B=book          - H=mastersthesis - 
H=phdthesis     - C=incollection  - P=proceedings   - T=techreport    - 
M=manual        
*R=required     - *U=useful       - *O=optional     - *N=Not applicable

                A       I       B       H       C       P       T       M
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
*author         R       R       R       R       R       *N      R       R
*title          R       R       R       R       R       R       R       R

booktitle       N       R       N       N       R       N       N       N
editor          O       U       R       N       U       U       N       N
journal         R       N       O       N       N       N       N       N
organization    O       O       N       O       O       O       R       O

*pages          R       R       N       N       R       N       N       N
*npages         O       O       R       R       O       R       R       O

*publisher      R       R       R       O       R       R       O       O
*institution    N       N       N       R       N       N       R       O
series          O       O       O       O       O       O       O       O
edition         R       R       O       N       O       O       N       N
volume          R       N       O       N       O       O       N       N
number          R       O       O       N       O       O       R       O

-address        O       O       O       O       O       O       O       O
-note           O       O       O       O       O       O       O       O

*year           R       R       R       R       R       R       R       R
*month          U       U       U       U       U       U       U       U
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