For my thesis, I need to cite some pieces of software documentation. The website in question is the documentation of Kubernetes.

I'm fine with using @misc entries in my bibtex file, but obviously I need to fill in the author field.

Usually, when I can't find the author of a specific website, I look up the imprint at the bottom of the page. As the Kubernetes documentation doesn't provide any imprint, there is only © 2017 The Kubernetes Authors or Copyright © 2017 The Linux Foundation® at the bottom of the page.

To me, it looks a little bit odd to have "The Kubernetes Authors" in my bibliography. What should I do?


You can cite using @misc without Author field. To to that, you need to include a key field. Here is an example:

@misc{KubernetesManual2017, title = {{Kubernetes Manual}}, howpublished = "\url{please put the url}", year = {2017}, note = "[Online; accessed 04-Dec-2017]", key = "KubernetesManual2017", }

  • With this solution, the bibtex entry appears without an author in the bibliography. Is this really the academic way? Obviously, someone must have written the documentation. – Franz Wimmer Dec 4 '17 at 12:48
  • 5
    If a document has authors, obviously we should mention them. However, if a document doesn't mention any author then possibly it was meant to be that way. – Tushar Dec 4 '17 at 13:04

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