I'd use either 'Document' or 'Book'. It's a self-contained type of thing. The title will probably make clear that in the class of books/documents, it's a manual.
Thanks for you suggestion. Not sure if that would be appropriate in many cases. Usually manuals don't have authors, for instance. Then, there is the version number which is also specific for this type of entry.
Does Zotero require certain fields to filled (depending on the entry type)?
It doesn't look like user can create their own entry types, how do new ones make it into the official Zotero?
1. No Zotero doesn't require any field to be filled.
2. Through convincing Zotero and CSL creators/dev team to include it.
My sense at this point is that reference manual would ba a very hard sell, but why don't you tell us how a citation in a given style should look and we can see.
What adamsmith says. Thing is, chances are small that you'll find a citation style which has specific requirements for manuals. I'd say the manufacturer/division is the author. Since Zotero's entry types are not for the general purpose of making a 'true classification', but simply to link up style specifications with entry types, there would be no sense in Zotero supporting custom-made entry types.
I've just ran into the same issue/problem recently.
problem/issue: I want to have the "R Project" cited. They suggest to cite the program as follows:
R Development Core Team (2009). R: A language and environment for
statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing,
Vienna, Austria. ISBN 3-900051-07-0, URL http://www.R-project.org.
For bibtex that's the following entry:
@Manual{,
title = {R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing},
author = {{R Development Core Team}},
organization = {R Foundation for Statistical Computing},
address = {Vienna, Austria},
year = {2009},
note = {{ISBN} 3-900051-07-0},
url = {http://www.R-project.org},
}
bibtex & Latex recognize this entry and @Book and @Misc entries give different citations, see the link below, @Book does not have the "organisation" field, @Misc is missing almost everything (those entries were exported from Zotero, stored as "Book" and "Computer Program"):
Zotero limits me to use "Computer Program" or "Book" entries (due to ISBN).
I do not see any chance to get the (right) suggested citation for @Manual entry unless I do it manually (what a coincidence in words.. :)))
suggestion: "Computer Program" entry in Zotero should be exported as @Manual for bibtex, IMO.
opinion: I would like to have sometimes changed or redirected some export options which is now default: export NOTE field as URL field into bibtex format, or export URL field as HOWTOPUBLISHED field into bibtex format.
Cheers, Milan
p.s. I realized some html tags are filtered here (I was not able to enter a preview image of a link) and so, I miss BBCode tags very much...
Convention in CSL is to cite software manuals as Software. Other manuals are cited as Reports. I don’t see any specific need for a discrete “manual” type.
Being in a field where I end up citing a lot of manuals and writing a lot of latex, I'm wondering how does one then easily cite something like R in the way that they suggest?
After all seems a bit silly that after migrating to a reference manager program, I end would end up managing references to programs manually.
I have a question regarding the recommendation to cite software manuals as "software". When I use that item type in Zotero, the options for the author label are "Programmer" and "Contributor". Sometimes the author of a user manual is not actually one of the developers of the software. Would "Contributor" be the appropriate author label in such cases, or is "Contributor" meant for contributors to the software (in the sense of code/programming contributions)?
Kind of depends on how you want the citation to look. CSL doesn't have a separate category for programmer, so citation-style wise these are just treated as "author" so if that's what you want, you can also just incorrectly cite the manual authors as such.
@adamsmith: thanks for your reply. Just to clarify, the "as such" part of that statement refers to programmer? (Meaning, the suggestion is to label the manual author as "programmer" in the Zotero "Software" item type, because the CSL won't make a distinction anyway.)
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Does Zotero require certain fields to filled (depending on the entry type)?
It doesn't look like user can create their own entry types, how do new ones make it into the official Zotero?
2. Through convincing Zotero and CSL creators/dev team to include it.
My sense at this point is that reference manual would ba a very hard sell, but why don't you tell us how a citation in a given style should look and we can see.
I've just ran into the same issue/problem recently.
problem/issue: I want to have the "R Project" cited. They suggest to cite the program as follows:
R Development Core Team (2009). R: A language and environment for
statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing,
Vienna, Austria. ISBN 3-900051-07-0, URL http://www.R-project.org.
For bibtex that's the following entry:
@Manual{,
title = {R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing},
author = {{R Development Core Team}},
organization = {R Foundation for Statistical Computing},
address = {Vienna, Austria},
year = {2009},
note = {{ISBN} 3-900051-07-0},
url = {http://www.R-project.org},
}
bibtex & Latex recognize this entry and @Book and @Misc entries give different citations, see the link below, @Book does not have the "organisation" field, @Misc is missing almost everything (those entries were exported from Zotero, stored as "Book" and "Computer Program"):
http://img33.imageshack.us/my.php?image=manualvsmisc.png
Zotero limits me to use "Computer Program" or "Book" entries (due to ISBN).
I do not see any chance to get the (right) suggested citation for @Manual entry unless I do it manually (what a coincidence in words.. :)))
suggestion: "Computer Program" entry in Zotero should be exported as @Manual for bibtex, IMO.
opinion: I would like to have sometimes changed or redirected some export options which is now default: export NOTE field as URL field into bibtex format, or export URL field as HOWTOPUBLISHED field into bibtex format.
Cheers, Milan
p.s. I realized some html tags are filtered here (I was not able to enter a preview image of a link) and so, I miss BBCode tags very much...
I just have the same issue.
I'm surprised to see that nobody change this problem in 10 years.
The staff should work on this little problem.
Being in a field where I end up citing a lot of manuals and writing a lot of latex, I'm wondering how does one then easily cite something like R in the way that they suggest?
After all seems a bit silly that after migrating to a reference manager program, I end would end up managing references to programs manually.
Cheers,
Pertti