The <biblioentry> element wraps a bibliographic entry. It contains bibliographic information for a resource in raw form.
It does not encode any formatting information, punctuation, or extraneous text.
The contents of <biblioentry> need to provide enough information to generate inline references, notes, and a bibliography entry for that resource. Table 1 shows the required attributes.[1] Note that as of DocBook 5.1, the pubwork attribute is not valid in the DocBook schema (see Open Question 1).
Table 1 – Required attributes on <biblioentry>
| Attribute | Values | Notes |
|---|---|---|
xml:id | Valid XML ID | |
pubwork | Current values allowed on pubwork, possibly expanded. | Other possibilities are the existing role or typeof attributes. See Open Question 1. |
Table 2 lists the child elements of <biblioentry> that these conventions affect.
Table 2 – Child elements on <biblioentry>
| Element | Required | Notes |
|---|---|---|
<title> | yes | See the section titled “Titles” |
<abbrev>, <titleabbrev> | ?? | See the section titled “Titles” and Open Question 3. |
<subtitle> | no | See the section titled “Titles” |
<citetitle> | deprecated | Use <title> instead. |
<author>, <editor>, <othercredit> | yes | May be better to group these elements under <authorgroup>. See the section titled “Authors and other contributors” and Open Question 2. |
<publisher> | depends | I think this element should be required for certain publications, understanding that publisher is a broad category that may include traditional publishers, web sites, blogs, etc. However, there are situations where it isn't needed, for example for personal communications. See the section titled “Publisher information” |
<pubdate> | yes | Since the publication date is used in many places in most styles, it should be required, though stylesheets should be able to handle cases where it’s missing. I suggest requiring it to be in one of the following xs:date formats: date, gYear, or gYearMonth (YYYY-MM-DD, YYYY-MM, and YYYY). See Open Question 7. |
<edition> | no | If this is a number, then render according to the style (e.g., 2nd edition or 2nd ed.). If text other than a number, use the text directly. See Open Question 9. |
<volumenum> | no | If this is a number, then render according to the style with the assumption that a number represents either a volume number (e.g., vol. 2) or the number of volumes in a series (e.g., 2 vols). Differentiate using the role attribute. If text other than a number, render as is. See Open Question 10. Note: <volumenum> is typically interpreted differently when associated with a journal, conference paper, or other periodical. See the section titled “<biblioset>”. |
<biblioset> | no | Used to describe an enclosing resource. For example, if you are referencing a journal article, the complete <biblioentry> would be for that article, but there would be a <biblioset> child element that would describe the journal that includes the article. See the section titled “<biblioset>”. |
<biblioid> | no | Used to describe an identifier, for example, an ISBN.
The class attribute identifies the type of identifier, so the contents should not contain extra identification (i.e., use “978-1-937434-007” not “ISBN: 978-1-937434-007.”).
If there is no class attribute, use the value as is.
If there is a class attribute, then look for that value in gentext.
If a gentext value exists, use it, otherwise use the class attribute itself as a prefix (use otherclass if class="other"). |
| Other elements | no | The <citebiblioid> and <citerefentry> elements don’t seem to have a role to play in a <biblioentry>. The <person>, <personblurb>, and <personname> elements are better used as children of <author>, <editor>, or <othercredit>, rather than directly under <biblioentry>. See the section titled “Authors and other contributors”. |
[1] In this article, I use the term required to mean required by convention, not necessarily required by the schema.