What information needs to be included in BibTeX bibliographic entries?

Question

Sometimes I find bibtex entries more complete than others.

• Should all items have the same structure? For example “authors, title, conf, date”. What's the exact structure please?
• Should I classify book independently of articles?

Answer 1

You write that you use Bibtex, which is already a huge step forward in structuring the bibliography.

Every bibtex class (such as @book and @article) has its own mandatory and optional fields. You find them listed for instance on the Wikipedia page for Bibtex.

You should make sure that all your entries have the mandatory fields set. Once the database is in a consistent state, building the bibliography is a matter that is handled automatically by the bibtex style that you are using.

Answer 2

Federico has stated basically what you need to know. I.e., you should generally include the mandatory fields for the given reference type.

I would add that if you are using a citation style (e.g., APA, Harvard, etc.) you also need to check that you have included all fields required by that citation style. For example, APA version 6 requires DOIs where they are available.

Answer 3

Different types of materials have different mandatory fields. Books have completely different structure than articles. For instance, a book requires the publisher and a city, while articles specify volume number and page or article number.

So, for each type of material, you will need to include—as Federico states—the fields required for those materials. You will also definitely want to list books, articles, conference proceedings, and other materials as separate types, so that BibTeX handles them correctly when generating the bibliography.