LOCEN Resources Bibliography

Introduction

LOCEN (in particular Gianluca) decided to create this page as understood, after many years of research, how important and valuable it is to keep knowedge on scientific literature, and your notes and ideas on it and from it, in an well ordered and structured format that can be managed and queried through electronic means. The importance of this is that knowledge on scientific literature is a core fundamental strength of a good scientist. If you use electronic means to store this knowledge, year after year this knowledge and the electronic means to retrieve it become an integral part of your "extended mind", highly potentiating your natural mind.

An important tool that LOCEN uses to this purpose is the open-sources program JabRef:
JabRef.
JabRef allows you to create, manage, and query a database of bibliography entries (journal papers, conference papers, etc.) and other knowledge on them. This knowledge is in particular made of these elements:

  • Bibliographical information on papers (authors, year, title, abstract, etc.)
  • Information on the papers to more easily retrieve them (e.g., keywords to search the papers, "groups" that allow you to cluster papers in a better way than using directories, general relevance of the papers, etc.)
  • Your comments and notes on the papers (e.g., on what you have learned from the papers, key passages of the papers, etc.) 
  • The .pdf files of the papers

The power of this is that all this bliographical information, relevance information, and your comments go into a one .bib file (hosting the bibliographical database), and all .pdf files go into one directory. So, all your knowledge on literature is collected in only one point and you can search within it electronically very efficiently instead of having separate documents for your notes, several directories for for your .pdf files and documents, printed papers on hard-paper with notes on them, etc. 

This way of organising your knowledge becomes even more powerful if you also get these two good habits that avoid the need for you to keep articles on hard-paper and information written on them:

  • You get used to read papers directly in electronic format (pdf files), e.g. through a tablet, rather than on hard-paper.
  • You highlight text and put some specific notes directly in the pdf files of the database (e.g., rather than on paper on the printed papers; however, consider that all your comments in the .pdf file cannot be retrieved automatically, so limit them to local specific comments).

This web-page gives you the basic information on how to install and use JabRef.

Intalling JabRef

The program is written in Java. This has two implications: (a) it can run in any type of computer (Linux, McOS, Windows); (b) to run, it needs that that your computer has the Virtual Java Machine (JVM) installed on it. Usually the JVM is already installed in your computer: try to run JabRef, if it does run you have the JVM installed on it, otherwise you do not. If your computer does not have the JVM installed, you have to install it:
see here how to install Java Virtual Machine

To install JabRef you have to first download it in your computer in a directory that you like:
download JabRef from here.
From this web-site, download the file suitable for your computer operating system (Linux, Windows, McOS). 

Tips for installation in Windows: download the .exe file and install it to have a whole integration of JabRef in your system.

Tips for installation in Linux: you can install JabRef from Synaptic but this often does not install the last version of JabRef. To have the last version, download the .jar file from the download site indicated above, and then you can either launch it by double clicking on the file, or by creating a script that lauches it (if you do the latter, you might also find convenient to create a launcher that launches JabRef with a click of a button).

Installing the interface settings of JabRef

OK, now that JabRef is installed in your computer, you have to set the interface. To quickly do this, and, even more importantly, to use the same bibliografical standards and program settings used by LOCEN so you can exchange .bib files and bibliographical knowledge easily (as we will see below, this strongly depends on the use of a common bibtexkey format), do what follows:

  • Download in a directory of your computer the interface setting file from here:
    JabRef interface setting file used by LOCEN
  • With this action you download the .zip compressed file: "locenjabrefsettingsfile.zip". Decompress such file: it contains a directory ("locenjabrefsettingsfile") that in turn contains the file "LOCENJabRefSettingsFile.xml" that stores the JabRef settings you need.
  • Now you need to tell JabRef in your computer to import the settings from LOCENJabRefSettingsFile.xml. To this purpuse, open JabRef.
  • From JabRef, choose: menu "Options" item "Preferences"
  • In the window interface that opens, press the button at its bottom left called "Import preferences", select the file LOCENJabRefSettingsFile.xml, and click the "Open" button. Now JabRef has imported the LOCEN settings!
  • Now you have to tell the JabRef program in your computer your name: this name will be used by JabRef to automatically fill in the "Owner" field for each new entry you create. To do this, choose:  menu "Options" item "Preferences". From the interface that opens, on the left panel choose the option section "General" (it should be already selected). Then, in the field "Mark entries with your name", now set to "Lastname, Firstname", write your name: to this purpose, use the format of this example, "Baldassarre, Gianluca" (without vertical commas), as this is the format used by BibTex to indicate the names of people.
  • Note that the JabRef settings are set only in the specific computer where you did the operations above, so if you change the computer you have to do all these operations again.

Using JabRef

The key elements of a BibTex database: entries and fields

A reference database following the BibTex standard is formed by entries (an entry is a record of the database hosting the information related to a bibligraphical item, e.g. a journal article, a conference paper, a book) and each entry is formed by fields (e.g., the "author" field, the "year" field, and the "title" filed).

It is important that you get familiar with the types of entries ("ARTICLE", "INPROCEEDINGS", "BOOK" etc.) and fields ("Author", "Year", "Title", etc.) used in the BibTex standard. To this purpose, access the voice "BibTex" in Wikipedia, and read the section "Bibiographic information file". This requires only a little time, and you do not need to learn by heart the entries and fields but only to get an idea on them as you can refer to this section later on when you need it:
Wikipedia explanation of BibTex entries and fields.
Also, in the last section below we give detailed instructions on how to use in practice such entries and fields.

Creating a reference database file

Now you have to create a JabRef reference file, i.e. the database that will host your references. To create a new JabRef reference database file simply choose: menu "File" item "Create new database". Save the database in a working directory of your computer that you like by choosing: menu "File" item "Save database as...": e.g., give it a name "FirstDatabase". The database is now empty and you can insert the references manually in it.

The .bib file that you created is actually a text file. You can indeed open it with a text editor program (e.g., gedit under Linux), modify it, save it, and then open it again from BibTex once modified. Try to do this to exercise as this will give you much confidence and sense of control, and the means to do some operations indicated below.

You can create as many different .bib database files as you like. JabRef allows you to manage .bib files in parallel: in the interface each database is indicated by one tab, so you can jump between the different databases by clicking on their related tabs. Try to create a second databse with the name "SecondDatabase.bib" to experience this. After you have played with them, if you like you can delete them by closing them in JabRef and by deleting the related files in the directory where they are (note how JabRef also creates a back-up file .bak of them, used to save your data in case JabRef closes unexpectedly, so you also need to delete them).

Creating an entry by importing it from PubMed (or other databases)

A very important feature of JabRef is the possibility of directly querying on-line open databases (i.e., search papers in them) from within JabRef istelf, and of directly importing the reference data into your Jabref database. This is a very important feature as it allows you to import all information on a certain reference without the need of filling by hand in all its fields as this requires some time. 

To import from various databases, choose one of them from the menu "Web search": this will open a little interface to query and import from the databse.

To open the interface to query and import referencesd from PubMed, you can also directly press the butto "F5". In the permanent interface that opens, you can put keywords such as authors' names, words in title, journal name, etc., to serch the articles. All articles found by PubMed will be shown in a list in a separate window opened for this. Here you can browse the found references and decide which ones to actually import or not. Recall to tick the "Generate keys" radio button so that the references will be imported with the standard bibtexkey set in your JabRef program.

Creating an entry manually: the fields, and the tabs of fields

Unfortunately, for some papers it is not possible to import information from on-line databases. In other cases, the information given by such databases is not correctly structured. For example, Google Scholar gives very simplified information, using some entry/types and fields in wrong ways. In general, all databases, with exception of PubMed, give references with information organised in wrong fields with respect to the BibTex standard. Unfortunately, PubMed, who gives correct information, only contains information on papers that: (a) are relevant for biology and medicine; (b) are published in Journals. So information on non-biological/medical papers, or papers published in conferences, or books, etc., have to be found in other database, obtained directly from the paper publication (e.g., from books in paper or electronic), ecc. In all these cases you need to either insert or fix the bibliographical information on papers/books by hand. This is why it is important that you learn to choose bibliographical entries, and to structure the BibTex fields, in a professional way: this web-site helps you to do so.

To manually create an entry do what follows. Click on the button with a "+" (the button is in the button bar right under the menu bar).  This opens a window interface that allows you to select the type of entry you would like to create. Choose "Article" (this is an entry corresponding to a journal paper). You will see that an empty entry is created and this has two effects. First, the entry is added as 1 line to the list of entries of your database (now containing only 1 entry): this list is fundamental and shows all the entries of your database. Also, below the list of entries the program opens an interface that allows you to see the fields (e.g., "author", "year", etc.) of the currently selected entry and to change them. Try to insert information related to these fields to see what happens. You can close the field interface clicking on its "x" button. To open it again, double click on an entry in the entry list.

The fields are clustered in tabs. We now illustrate such tabs giving some general relevant indications on how to manage some of their fields: these are indications that hold for all types of entries (further informations on the fields, specific for the different types of entry, are indicated in the last section of this web-page):

  • Required fields: These are compulsory fields usually requested when you write the bibliographies of your papers, e.g. for a Journal or a Conference. These fields form the core bibliographical information of the entries so, with few exceptions (see the last section of this web-page), they should always be present:
    • Author: list of authors of the paper: for this, you must use the format indicated in this example: Baldassarre, Gianluca and Mirolli, Marco, and Barto, Andrew G.
    • Year. Use the format in this example: 2015
    • Title: the title of the paper.
    • Bibtexkey: This is a fundamental special field for each entry. It is actually not a field like the others, but rather the "key" of the database record (entry), used by BibTex to univocally identify the entry, e.g. to check if there are duplicate entries. In Latex, you also use this key to automatically insert a reference in the papers you write. As we will see below, the bibtexkey is also used to link the entry to its .pdf file. The BibTex key is the first information to appear in the entry information block (check this in the tab "Bibtex source" discussed below). An important thing that the JabRef setting file explained above does, is to tell your JabRef program the format to use to create the bibtexkey when you create one: it is important that you use this standard to exchange databases with LOCEN. You can easily and automatically use this standard as follows: first insert the previous three fields (author, year, title) in the entry. Then click the button with the "magic wand" (in Italian "bacchetta magica") at the left of the tabs panel: this will automatically create the key of the entry (eventually substituting the existing one). The created bibtexkey will be for example: BaldassarreMirolliBarto2013Noveltyorsurprise
  • Optional fields: These are additional fields that you might want to insert when available. A brief explanation follows:
    • Month: use the BibTex format, i.e. only the first three letters of the English month name, e.g.: Jan, Feb, Mar, ...
    • Note: put here additional information on the reference that cannot be hosted in other fields (e.g., the place and date of a conference of a paper published in Conference Proceedings)
    • Annote: information for "annoted bibliography", asked by some journals.
    • URL: you can write here the address of the web-page referring to the paper (e.g. a journal paper available online).
    • Doi: (Digital Object Identifier): this is a very important code that allows the unique identification of "electronic objects", such as Journal papers or other papers that have a DOI.
    • Issn: (International Standard Serial Number) Code used by publishers for univocally numbering series of books or monographs. It is not compulsory for them, and does not allow the identification of the publisher. 
    • Isbn: (International Standard Book Number) Code used by publishers for univocally numbering books or monographs. It is compulsory for publications conforming to this standard, and allows the identification of the publisher. 
  • Bibtex source: This is a tab containing only one very important item. This item is not a field but the whole entry information, related to all fields forming it, that is actually stored in the databse .bib file. You can manually change the fields contents directly from here, but you must respect the "field={}," syntax used by BibTex. You can also copy the entry from here and paste it somewhere else, e.g. in another database or in a Latex bibliography. You can also paste the entry into this Tab if you copy it from other sources using the BibTex format (e.g., another database): if you do this, you will immediately see how the content of what you pasted is immediately visualised in the entry fields.
  • Additional-database: This tab contains fields that host information on the relevance of the reference or serve its retrieval. The fields are as follows:
    • Groups: These are fundamental keywords that allow you to organise the entries of your database, used instead of directories and much more flexible than them: the important use of Groups is explained in a dedicated section below.
    • Keywords: Free keywords that you might want to add to more easily retrieve the entry.
    • Hindex: Field created by Gianluca, not part of the standard BibTex fields. The current number of citations of the paper in Google Scholar: if you want you can insert info in this field by hand to have a rough idea of the importance of the paper.
    • Hyear: Field created by Gianluca, not part of the standard BibTex fields. The year when you wrote the Goolge Scholar citation number of the previous point.
    • File: The link to the .pdf file of the database: this is a fundamental element of your database, further explained in a dedicated section below.
    • Pdf: This field is present for compatibility with previous version of BibTex, so you do not need to use it.
    • Timestamp: The system inserts info in this field automatically when you create a new entry; it keeps memory of when the entry was created.
    • Owner: This field indicates the creator of the entry, and is generated automatically with your name based on the JabRef options you modified as indicated above.
  • Additional-abstract: This is a one field tab where you should *always insert* the abstract of the paper: the abstract is fundamental to retrieve the paper, to have an idea on what it is about, etc., so get the good habit of inserting the abstract either automatically (see below), or by copying pasting it from the .pdf paper, or even by copying it manually when you have old .pdf files that do not allow you to copy/paste the abstract from them.
    Relevant tip: often when you copy/paste the abstract from a .pdf file, it has the newline characters within it (in Italian: "gli accapo") that make the lines of the abstract as short as they appear in the original paper. These newline character also appears in the BibTex database if you simply copy/paste the abstract in it, but you do not want this as this creates messy effects: try to do this, and see the effects in the "Bibtex source" Tab. To avoid this problem: copy the abstract from the .pdf file, paste it in a text editor (e.g., gedit in Linux), highlight a new line character with the mouse (to do this, click with the mouse at the end of a line and hold the button down, drag to the beginning of the next line, then release the mouse button), select the "replace" command of the text editor, tell the interface to replace the character with "nothing" (i.e., leave the field of the characters to replace empty), choose OK. This will immediately remove all newline characters. Now you can copy the abstract from the text editor and paste it into the JabRef "Additional-abstract" field.
  • Additional-comment: This tab contains only one field: "comment". Write here your comments and notes related to the paper, e.g. related to the quality of the paper, who suggested you the paper or how you found it, what have you learned from it, its relevance for one of your specific research, copied/pasted critical parts of it, etc.  This is very important as it allows you to take notes on the paper and these remain associated to the entry. In the future, this will allow you to easily retrieve these notes as they are permanently associated to the paper. Moreover, when you do a search by keywords (as indicated below) your search will also involves the comment field with your notes, not only the other fields of the entry (e.g. the abstract). Tip: to facilitate this later electronic search, take the habit of writing important keywords in your notes, e.g. who suggested the paper to you, how you found it, for which research of yours it is relevant, etc. Before writing your notes, insert in the field the indication of who made the comment (e.g., you) as this will allow to put comments of different people in the comment field. To this purpose, use the standard used by LOCEN (that also facilitates automatic processing), in particular preceed your comments and notes with your name similarly to this example:
    *** Baldassarre, Gianluca *** This classic review paper, suggested by John Smith at the Conference at Rome on intrinsic motivations (IMs, extrinsic motivations, EMs), is relvant for my research on...  . The paper is important as it tells... E.g., the authors say "...".
Exploring different types of entries: a .bib example file

To help you learn how to populate and manage a JabRef database, we give you an example database that we already created for you. Dowload it in your computer from here:
Download the example database .bib and .pdf files 
Unzip the file in a directory that will host your database and pdf files: the zipped file containts the .bib database file, called "MyBibliography.bib", and the related .pdf files. 
Open the file MyBibliography.bib from JabRef by choosing: menu "File" item "Open database", and then follow the instructions to indicate to the program to open the file MyBibliography.bib.

The database contains one example for each important entry type: see how they look like. The use of these entry types and of the related fields are illustrated in detail in the last section of this web-page. 

Linking a pdf file to its entry

A fundamental feature of JabRef is the possibiilty of linking .pdf files to the related entries of your databse. Indeed, JabRef allows you to organise all your pdf files in an ordered manner, i.e to link them with the related bibliographical information, to link them with your comments and notes on the paper, and to organise them without the need of using directories but rather the much better "Groups" (see below).

To have more order, keep the .bib file of your database and all your pdf files in one directory: this facilitate copy/pasting your whole knowledge database, moving it from one place to the other of your file-system, making backups of it, exchanging it with other people.

Once you have done this, you have to set your database so that JabRef searches the pdf files in the same directory where the .bib file is. To this purpose, Choose menu "File", option "Database properties". A window interface opens. Here, put a single dot character (i.e.:  .  ) in each of the three fields "File directory",  "PDF directory",  "PS directory", and press the OK button. Note that this setting is linked to the specific database you are working on, so for each database you create you have to repeat this setting.

Now we see how to actually linking a pdf file to its BibTex bibliographical entry in your database. To this purpose:

  • Create the bibliographical entry in the database. Make sure that a the Bibtexkey is standard (i.e., press the magic-wand button).
  • Copy the Bibtexkey, with Ctr+c or the right-button of the mouse, from the last field of the Tab "Required fields" related to the entry.
  • Use the Bibtexkey you have copied to change the name of the pdf file of the paper (do this through your file browser program).
  • Put the file in the directory of the .bib file if it is not yet there.
  • Within JabRef, select the Tab "Additional-database". There, click the button "Auto" that is at the right side of the field "File". This will automatically create a link between the entry and the pdf file thanks to the fact that: (a) the Bibtexkey of the entry and the pdf name are the same; (b) the pdf file is in the same directory as the .bib file. If everything goes OK, you will see that the field "File" is added a line of text with the name fo the pdf file repeated two times. If this does not happen check that you have followed all steps above.
Search the database!

A fundamental feature of JabRef is the possibility of searching information in the database automatically. To this purpose, open the Search-interface by clicking on the button (in the button-bar) with a magnifying lens icon on it, or select the menu "Tools" item "Search". On the search interface, you can write the keywords to make the search and then press the button "Search All Fields" to implement the search itself (try to tick the "Filter" option, so the found entries, and only them, are shown in the entry list). There are many options to do the search: click on the "?" button at the bottom-right of the search interface to know about them. Try to play with them!

Marking entries: a very handy option

A very handy feature of JabRef is the one to Mark/Unmark entries. You can Mark/Unmark with the buttons in the button menu. The utility of this feature is that all Marked entries automatically flot at the top of the list of entries so you can keep them in sight, for example if in some periods of your life you want to work on them. Important: to have this floating-at-the-top effect, the radiobutton Option-->Preferences-->EntryTable-->FloatMarkedEntries has to be ticked! The marking information is saved with the database, so it is not forgotten when you close JabRef. Also, you can use various marking colours (that you can choose from ), and since this are ranked the related entries flot at the top of the list in the order colour. Chech the help on Marking for other information.

Groups: what they are, creating them, using them

What are Groups? Groups is a field that is very important for JabRef. Basically, groups are keywords that summarise the themes of the papers, for example Type_Review, TopicMind_Attention, TopicBrain_Amygdala. Groups can be used instead of the directories where you would put the .pdf files of the papers to sort them by theme. With respect to the directories, groups have the important advantage that you can associate one entry to many groups rather than only to one. By associating one paper to many groups, you can use the groups as keywords that broadly describe the papers, or as a way to rapidly find papers that you sorted under specific themes (groups) of your interest, e.g. papers that have both "Kind_Review" and "TopicMind_Attention" in their Groups field.

Group interface. To create and manage Groups, open the Groups interface via the menu "View", item "Toggle groups interface" (or click the related button in the button bar under the manu bar). 

Creating a group by hand. To create a group by hand, go in the Groups interface and click the button just above the "All entries" group (this is an already existing default group including all references of your database). An interface window will open that allows you to create different types of groups. Let us create together an item of the most useful type of groups. Click on the radio button "Dynamically group entires by searching a field for a keyword". Then type "Review" in the field "Name": this is the name of the group with which you will see the group in the group list. Write in the field "Keyword" the content on the basis of which entries will be grouped, e.g. "Kind_Review". Then write in the field "Field" the field where the system will search the keyword "Kind_Review". Click OK.

Using Groups. Now the group "Review" will appear in the group list under "All entries". You can now use the group as follows. To assign an entry to a group, type the group content, e.g. "Type_Review", in the field "Groups" of some of your entries (or directly drag and drop the entry on the group "Review" to have the same effect).  To recall all entries that contain "Type_Review" in their field "Groups", select (click) the group "Review" in the goup list: JabRef will show you all those entries in the entry list!

Groups options. Try to explore the various options of the Groups, and see the JabRef help related to them, to discover other features of Groups.

Tip: if double-click on an existing group, you will open the inferface to inspect and modify it.

Tip 2: you can create a "tree" of groups and subgroups. E.g., you can create the group "Kind" (of paper) and the subgroups under it "Kind_Review", "Kind_Research", etc. Use such keywords in the field "Keyword" of the field, but simply use "Kind", "Review", "Research", etc., as the Name of the groups: in this way, the group list will nicely show the group "Kind", and then under it (indented) the groups: "Review", "Research", etc.

Tip 3: Groups are linked to a particular BibTex database. So if you create a tree of groups for a database, it is valid only for that database. The information on Groups is indeed written at the end of the .bib file of the database. Thus, if you want to re-use a Groups tree in another database, open the file .bib with a Text Editor program (such as gedit under Linux), copy the last part of the databse (you will recognise it) and paste it at the end of the new .bib database.

A group tree to use.  In the following web-page you can find a group tree (with groups and sub-groups) already prepared for you on the topics of Cognitive Sciences, and that you can use and modify as you like (insert it into your database file as indicated in the previous point "Tip 3"):
Group tree on Cognitive Sciences to copy and paste into your database .bib file

Manage content selector

We close this section by suggesting you three useful tools to maintain your database (explore JabRef menus and Internet Forums to found more of them).

For each field, you can set predefined contents that you can selected from a menu. This is useful if you need to insert a specific content to a field several time (e.g. *** YourLastname, YourName *** in the field Comment). To do this, select menu "Tools", item "Manage content selector". Then select an existing field from the list "Field name", or create a new one. Then you can create a New content for that field. You can crete as many contents for the field as you like. These contents will appear in a list from which you can select one of them to insert in the field. to this purpose, you open this list by clicking on the button with a triangle that will appear at the right of the field after you have created predefined contents for it

Replace string

You can search and replace a string (e.g., a word) with: menu "Tools", item "replace string". Be careful, this command makes the change in the whole database, so use it with care. To limit the changes, do for example what follows: tick "Limit to selected entries" to change the string only in the few currently selected entries; tick "Limit to fields", and specify a field name, to make the change only within specific fields. 

Set/clear/rename fields

You can set the content of a particular field to a particular string (you can either substitute or add a content to the current content), clear its content to null, or change the field name to another field name, with: menu "Tools", item "Set/clear/rename fields". Be careful, this command changes the whole database, so use it with care and limit the change as follows: tick "Selected entries" to make the changes only in the few currently selected entries. 

Importing an existing .bib database into your database

You can easily import .bib databases into one of your databases, e.g. to exchange databases with somebody you know. To this purpose, from JabRef select the menu "File", item "Import into current database". Then follow the instructions to select the file to import and click the OK button. An interface window opens showing you the list of the entries you can import: the interface also tells you if the there are duplicates and allows you to not import them. Then click the OK button to actually import the selected entries. 

How to use BibTex entries and fields

There are good habits to learn on which entrytypes to use for which type of publications, and how to populate their fields. Here we consider the most important entries.

ARTICLE

UseUse this entrytype for journal papers.
Required fields: always insert Author, Year, Title, Volume, Pages number; insert volume Number, Publisher, and Address of publisher when available. Press the magic-wand button to automatically insert the standardised Bibtexkey!
Optional fields: insert URL and DOI when available.
Abstract: try always to insert this!
Additional database: try to always put the .pdf in File when you have it. Insert Hindex and Hyear if you think the paper is particularly important. Check if Timestamp and Owner are there: they should be inserted automatically.
Comment: put a comment if you have read the paper or have other info on it

INPROCEEDINGS

UseUse this entrytype for papers published in conference proceedings, but only for papers that are actual articles, i.e. made by more than 2 pages (see below for extended abstracts). 
Required fields: Always insert Author, Year, Title, Booktitle (that is, the title of the whole proceedings book), Editors (i.e., the editors of the proceedings, usually the Chair of the conference and few other people), Pages number; insert the Publisher and Address of publisher when available for the conference proceedings (this happens, often, when the proceedings are an actual edited book). Put Organisation if there was a universtiy or institute organising/hosting the conference. In Note, do put the place and dates of the conference as this is requested by most bibliography styles (format it as in these examples: San Diego, CA, USA7--9/11/12; or: Osaka, Japan, 29/11/12--1/12/12) . Press the magic-wand button to automatically insert the standardised Bibtexkey!   
Optional fields: Insert URL and DOI when available.
Abstract: Try always to insert this!
Additional database: try to always put the .pdf in File when you have it. Insert Hindex and Hyear if you think the paper is particularly important. Timestamp and Owner should be there automatically.
Comment: Put a comment if you have read the paper or have other info on it


CONFERENCE

UseUse this entrytype for abstracts or extended abstracts published in conference proceedings or other non-official collections; abstracts/extended abstracts are papers that are 1 or 2 pages long. For all fields, this entrytype should be treated as the INPROCEEDINGS entrytype.

BOOK

UseThis entrytype has to be used in two cases: (a) for book monographies: i.e., when one or few authors write the entire book; (b) for edited books: one or few editors collect contributions from several other authors, and these contributions form separated chapters of the book, each with its own authors (this is as the INPROCEEDINGS entrytype, with the only difference that the book is not linked to a conference meeting).
Required fields: Always insert Author, Year, Title (that is the title of the book, for monographies, or the title of the single contribution, for edited books), Booktitle (only in case of edited books), Editors (only in case of edited books), Pages number (only in case of edited books), Publisher, Address of publisher. Press the magic-wand button to automatically insert the standardised Bibtexkey!
Optional fields: Insert URL and DOI when available; insert Isbn and Issn when available.
Abstract: Try always to insert this!
Additional database: Try to always put the .pdf in File when you have it. Insert Hindex and Hyear if you think the book is particularly important. Timestamp and Owner should be there automatically.
Comment: Put a comment if you have read the book or have other info on it.

INCOLLECTION

UseUse this entrytype for chapters of edited books. 
Required fields: Always insert Author of the chapter, Year, Title of the chapter, Booktitle (that is, the title of the whole book), Editors (i.e., the editors of the whole book), Pages number, Publisher, Address of publisher. Press the magic-wand button to automatically insert the standardised Bibtexkey!
Optional fields: Insert URL and DOI when available; insert Isbn and Issn when available.
Abstract: Always try to insert this!
Additional database: Try to always put the .pdf in File when you have it. Insert Hindex and Hyear if you think the book chapter is particularly important. Timestamp and Owner should be there automatically.
Comment: Put a comment if you have read the book chapter or have other info on it.

INBOOK

UseUse this entrytype for parts of monography books, in particular for relevant chapters of them (this entrytype is used rarely to cite whole book chapters as usually one uses the BOOK entrytype, and then indiates the pages of the relevant page(s) of the book directly in the citation within his/her paper). For the rest, fill in the fields as the book entrytype, with the addiction of the Requested field Chapter (put the chapter number in this field).

PHDTHESIS

Use: Use this entrytype for PhD theses. 
Required fields: Always insert Author, Year, Title, Type (e.g., "Phd in Computer Science"), School (e.g.: "Department of Computer Science, Univesity of Essex"), Address (the place of the school, e.g. "Colchester, UK"). Press the magic-wand button to automatically insert the standardised Bibtexkey!
Optional fields: insert URL and DOI when available.
Abstract: Insert abstract or summary of thesis.
Additional database: Try to always put the .pdf in File of the thesis when you have it. Insert Hindex and Hyear if you think the thesis is particularly important. Timestamp and Owner should be there automatically.
Comment: Put a comment if you have read the thesis or have other info on it.


MASTERTHESIS

Use: Use this entrytype for master theses. Fill in the fields as for PHDTHESIS.

TECHNICALREPORT

Use: Use this entrytype for technical reports, i.e. for papers that have not an official publisher, but are made accessible in public archives, e.g. electronic repositories in the web. 
Required fields: always insert Author, Year, Title, Type (e.g., "Technical report", "Electronic paper", etc., as indicated in the paper), Institution (the Institution managing the series of Technical reports, and eventually the electronic repository hosting the paper), Address (the place of the institution, e.g. "Boston, MA, USA"), Number (most of times technical reports have a number, e.g.: "2015--7"). Press the magic-wand button to automatically insert the standardised Bibtexkey!
Optional fields: Insert URL and DOI when available.
Abstract: Try to always to insert this!
Additional database: Try to always insert the .pdf in File of the report when you have it. Insert Hindex and Hyear if you think the technical report is particularly important. Timestamp and Owner should be there automatically.
Comment: Insert a comment if you have read the technical report or have other info on it.

MISC

Use: Use this entrytype for  "miscellaneous" papers, i.e. for all papers that are not suitable for any of the previous entrytypes, e.g. for your notes or presentations or ideas, or for newspaper/periodical articles. 
Required fields: always insert Author, Year, Title, Howpublished (e.g., the name of the newspaper or periodical), Institution if available, Note (put here any further information on the publication, e.g. the day of publication such as 05/01/15). Press the magic-wand button to automatically insert the standardised Bibtexkey!
Optional fields: Insert URL, usually important, and DOI when available.
Abstract: Insert this if available.
Additional database: Try to always put the .pdf in File of the paper when you have it. Timestamp and Owner should be there automatically.
Comment: Put your comment or any other info you have.