Which bibliography entry type and style for document with official ID/number?

Question

I am trying to create a BibLaTex bibliography database for official reports using JabRef. Every report has mainly a title, month, year and a document number and issue.

So far I have included both last items in the same number field as shown below using the TechReport entry type.

@TechReport{key,
  title  = {My document's title},
  year   = {2017},
  number = {PRO-A-1234-5678, Issue 1},
  month  = jun,
}

I also use Lyx with a KOMA-Script Report document type to include the bibliography. However, I have not found among the great amount of standard bibstyles, one that shows the document number (and issue) for the PDF output. Furthermore, I'd like that the style respects my upper- and lowercases, so the plain styles would not be an option, I guess.

I have therefore two questions:

1. Is there any other better style for my bib entries that contain document official number/ID/issue than Report/TechReport as used here?
2. Which bibliography style should I use to show that official number in my bibliography after compilation?

Answer 1

EDIT Following the comment by @moewe you can also use biblatex, using report entries with a number field. For this solution character case in the titles is preserved by default, the title is printed in italics and the comma after the issue becomes a dot - however, biblatex bibliographies are highly customizable so this can be changed if needed.

reports.bib

@report{a,
  title  = {My Document's title},
  year   = {2017},
  month  = jun,
  number = {PRO-A-1234-5678, Issue 1},
}

@report{b,
  title  = {My other Document's title},
  year   = {2017},
  month  = jul,
  number = {PRO-A-1234-5678, Issue 2},
}

Main file:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{biblatex}
\addbibresource{reports.bib}
\begin{document}
Citing: \cite{a,b}
\printbibliography
\end{document}

Result:

---

ORIGINAL ANSWER

This can be done with the plain bibliography style, using misc entries. For misc the available fields are author, title, howpublished, month, year, note, key, all optional and displayed in that order by most standard styles (see, e.g., https://nwalsh.com/tex/texhelp/bibtx-17.html, https://verbosus.com/bibtex-style-examples.html). The key field is not displayed, but can act as sorting field instead of author (as in the example below). Display of upper case characters can be forced with extra {} (also in the example).

MWE:

reports.bib

@misc{a,
  title  = {My Document's title},
  year   = {2017},
  month  = jun,
  howpublished = {PRO-A-1234-5678, Issue 1},
  key = {x}
}

@misc{b,
  title  = {My other {D}ocument's title},
  year   = {2017},
  month  = jul,
  note = {PRO-A-1234-5678, Issue 2},
  key = {y}
}

Main file:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Id before date, case modified: \cite{a}

Id after date, case preserved: \cite{b}
\bibliographystyle{plain}
\bibliography{reports}
\end{document}

Result:

See also How to control the order of fields in bibtex? for more information on customizing bibliography styles.

Answer 2

Thank you for your answer @Marijn. As I was looking for help in the integration with LyX too, I'll post an answer for the two questions.

1. Use biblatex, since it allows a better customization of the bibliography. I kept the previous BibLaTex database generated with JabRef. This is an example of a report entry as pointed by Marijn:

   @report{a,
     title  = {My Document's title},
     year   = {2017},
     month  = jun,
     number = {PRO-A-1234-5678, Issue 1},
   }
   

2. The integration with LyX was however a bit more difficult, because there is no official support for biblatex yet (expected in v2.3, currently in development). Therefore I followed the wiki https://wiki.lyx.org/BibTeX/Biblatex and this other question BibLaTex, Biber and Lyx: how to resolve \bibliographystyle error?.

   In conclusion, I had to add the following lines to my LaTeX Preamble:

   \usepackage[style=numeric,backend=bibtex8]{biblatex}
   % add bibliography database
   \addbibresource{database.bib}
   

   Notice the bibtex8 backend to avoid the BiBTeX error: I found no \citation commands, since biber is not available in my LateX installation. Use the default biber if possible. The style remains customizable.

   And add the following block to my document according to the examples provided in the aforementioned wiki.

   

   Notice also heading=bibintoc so that the bibliography appears in the table of contents using a KOMA-Script document class.