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BibTeX @techreport: Reports, Standards

Use @techreport for a report issued by a university, company, agency or standards body. The type field turns it into a working paper, white paper, RFC or standard.

On this page
  1. When to use @techreport
  2. Examples
  3. Fields
  4. How it is typeset
  5. Standards, RFCs and white papers
  6. @manual
  7. Common mistakes
  8. biblatex
  9. Related types

When to use @techreport

@techreport is for documents that an institution publishes itself, usually in a numbered series: technical reports, research reports, working papers, white papers, government reports. If the report later appeared in a journal or in proceedings, cite that version as an @article or @inproceedings. Documentation for software or hardware is a @manual, and a document without any issuing institution is a @misc.

Examples

A minimal entry with only the required fields:

@techreport{lamport1989,
  author      = {Lamport, Leslie},
  title       = {The Part-Time Parliament},
  institution = {Digital Equipment Corporation, Systems Research Center},
  year        = {1989}
}

The same report with type, number, address, month and a link:

@techreport{lamport1989parttime,
  author      = {Lamport, Leslie},
  title       = {The Part-Time Parliament},
  type        = {Research Report},
  number      = {49},
  institution = {Digital Equipment Corporation, Systems Research Center},
  address     = {Palo Alto, California},
  month       = sep,
  year        = {1989},
  url         = {https://bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/tech_reports/SRC-RR-49.pdf}
}

Fields

Field Required Meaning
author yes Authors of the report; an organization goes in double braces
title yes Title of the report
institution yes The institution that issued the report
year yes Year of publication
type no Replaces the label “Technical Report”, e.g. {Working Paper}
number no Number of the report in its series
address no Location of the institution
month no Month, e.g. sep
note no Anything else, printed at the end

url and doi are not standard fields. plain, abbrv, alpha and unsrt ignore them, so the link in the second example is not printed. With these styles, add note = {\url{...}} and load the url package; plainnat and other newer styles print url directly.

How it is typeset

The plain style prints the two examples as:

Leslie Lamport. The part-time parliament. Technical report, Digital Equipment Corporation, Systems Research Center, 1989.

Leslie Lamport. The part-time parliament. Research Report 49, Digital Equipment Corporation, Systems Research Center, Palo Alto, California, September 1989.

The label is “Technical Report” followed by the number, or “Technical report” when there is no number. A type field replaces these words, as in the second example. With a number it is printed as you typed it (Research Report 49); without a number the standard styles lower-case everything after the first letter ({White Paper} becomes “White paper”).

Standards, RFCs and white papers

Classic BibTeX has no type for standards. @techreport fits well, with the standards body as corporate author and the designation in number:

@techreport{iso9899,
  author      = {{ISO/IEC}},
  title       = {Information Technology -- Programming Languages -- {C}},
  type        = {International Standard},
  number      = {ISO/IEC 9899:2018},
  institution = {International Organization for Standardization},
  address     = {Geneva, Switzerland},
  year        = {2018}
}

ISO/IEC. Information technology – programming languages – C. International Standard ISO/IEC 9899:2018, International Organization for Standardization, Geneva, Switzerland, 2018.

An RFC works the same way:

@techreport{rfc9110,
  author      = {Fielding, Roy T. and Nottingham, Mark and Reschke, Julian},
  title       = {{HTTP} Semantics},
  type        = {{RFC}},
  number      = {9110},
  institution = {Internet Engineering Task Force},
  month       = jun,
  year        = {2022},
  doi         = {10.17487/RFC9110}
}

Roy T. Fielding, Mark Nottingham, and Julian Reschke. HTTP semantics. RFC 9110, Internet Engineering Task Force, June 2022.

For a white paper published by a company, use type = {White Paper} and the company as institution. A white paper without an institution, such as a PDF on a personal website, is better cited as @misc with the URL in howpublished; see citing a website.

Some styles have a dedicated type: IEEEtran defines @standard. Entries of that type are not portable, because the standard styles don’t know it.

@manual

@manual is for technical documentation: user guides, reference manuals, language definitions. Only the title is required, which makes it useful when a document has no personal author.

Fields
Required title
Optional author, organization, address, edition, month, year, note 
@manual{rcoreteam2024,
  title        = {R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing},
  author       = {{R Core Team}},
  organization = {R Foundation for Statistical Computing},
  address      = {Vienna, Austria},
  year         = {2024}
}

R Core Team. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria, 2024.

The title is set in italics and keeps its capitalization. Without an author, plain puts the organization first and sorts by it. @manual has no institution, publisher or number field.

Common mistakes

  • school, publisher or organization instead of institution. @techreport reads only institution; BibTeX warns that it is empty.
  • No author. author is required. For a report without named authors, enter the organization: author = {{World Health Organization}}. Without the inner braces it is parsed as a person’s name.
  • The label inside number. number = {Research Report 49} prints “Technical Report Research Report 49”. Put only the number there and the label in type.
  • Lower-cased acronyms in type and title. Protect them with braces: {RFC}, {HTTP}. See protecting capital letters.
  • Citing the report although a published version exists. Prefer the journal or conference version if that is what you read.

biblatex

biblatex’s generic type is @report, with the required fields author, title, type, institution and year (or date). @techreport remains valid as an alias that sets type = {techreport}. @manual exists as well. @standard is defined, but the standard biblatex styles format it like @misc, so @report with a free-text type is the practical choice for standards there too. url and doi are printed.