What do these fields mean?
The fields used for publication information is in standard Unix refer(1) format. An abbrevated version of the manpage follows.
REFER(1) REFER(1)
NAME
refer - preprocess bibliographic references for groff
USAGE
Bibliographic databases
The bibliographic database is a text file consisting of
records separated by one or more blank lines. Within each
record fields start with a % at the beginning of a line.
Each field has a one character name that immediately fol-
lows the %. It is best to use only upper and lower case
letters for the names of fields. The name of the field
should be followed by exactly one space, and then by the
contents of the field. Empty fields are ignored. The
conventional meaning of each field is as follows:
A The name of an author. If the name contains a
title such as Jr. at the end, it should be sepa-
rated from the last name by a comma. There can be
multiple occurrences of the A field. The order is
significant. It is a good idea always to supply an
A field or a Q field.
B For an article that is part of a book, the title of
the book
C The place (city) of publication.
D The date of publication. The year should be speci-
fied in full. If the month is specified, the name
rather than the number of the month should be used,
but only the first three letters are required. It
is a good idea always to supply a D field; if the
date isunknown, a value such as in press or
unknown can be used.
E For an article that is part of a book, the name of
an editor of the book. Where the work has editors
and no authors, the names of the editors should be
given as A fields and , (ed) or , (eds) should be
appended to the last author.
G US Government ordering number or ISBN.
I The publisher (issuer).
J For an article in a journal, the name of the jour-
nal.
N Journal issue number.
O Other information. This is usually printed at the
end of the reference. Commonly used for pricing
information.
P Page number. A range of pages can be specified as
m-n.
Q The name of the author, if the author is not a per-
son. This will only be used if there are no A
fields. There can only be one Q field.
T Title. For an article in a book or journal, this
should be the title of the article.
V Volume number of the journal or book.