AAS Journal Reference Instructions

The reference and bibliographic style of the AAS Journals generally requires that references should be cited in the text by the last name of the authors(s) and the date of publication, with no comma before the date, according to these examples: articles by three or more authors are cited by the first author followed by “et al.” and the date (Goodman et al. 2003); articles by two authors are cited by both last names joined by an ampersand (Press & Rybicki 1992); and articles by a single author are cited by the last name and the date of publication (Hale 1929).

The AAS Journal’s BibTeX style file, aasjournal.bst, encodes these reference styles and is provided with our AASTeX 6 release. Detailed LaTeX instructions may be found in the AASTeX 6 Guide.

Citation Policies

Software Citations

As described in the AAS Journal’s software policy, software can be cited in two ways:

Ideally, both forms of citation should be included; alongside these formal references, authors may also want to include footnote URLs to appropriate code repositories, such as GitHub, or metadata indices, such as the Astrophysics Source Code Library.

Authors may also include a section below the acknowledgments listing scientific software packages used as part of the work presented in the manuscript. This should be done via the new \software AASTeX 6 macro. The content of the command should take the form of a list of software name and citation in parentheses, which would also appear in the article’s reference list. For example:

\software{Astropy \citep{http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201322068},
          Matplotlib \citep{http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/MCSE.2007.55}}

This is analogous to acknowledging a major facility or instrument and is done for the same reason, to give credit to a project which is generally useful for the community. More information can be found in the AASTeX 6 documentation.

Other Online Sources

Electronic catalogs, databases, observers’ guides, instrument documentation, electronic conference proceedings, electronic journals, and other stable (non-changing) documents available online should be listed in the reference list in the same manner as other references. These should give the author(s) or authoring agency, title of the document, location and name of the hosting organization (e.g., Pasadena, CA: JPL), version consulted if any, page or document number if any, and the URL or persistent identifier (see examples below). References in this class include databases, manuals, conference proceedings, and similar documents, but not general informational sites for instruments or projects, sites for downloading computer code, or articles posted on personal web pages. Citations of electronic journals should follow normal journal format, omitting page number if none is used, followed by the URL. See below for examples.

Note that URLs for all other electronic resources that lack a sufficient degree of permanence, such as personal web pages, general informational sites for organizations, telescopes, surveys, projects, proposals, sites for uploading computer or mathematical code, and other sites whose content regularly changes, should be given in a footnote at first mention in the text, but not listed in the reference list.

Unpublished Material

References to articles in preparation, preprints, or other sources generally not available to readers should be avoided if possible. Please check preprint references carefully in case any of these have been formally published since your manuscript was prepared; if the preprints have not been published, please give the reference (e.g, arXiv) number and the journal to which the work has been submitted. If no publication of record is available, preprints may be listed in the reference list with version given. Private communications, unpublished works, and articles in preparation should be cited only in the run of text, giving authors’ initials and the year if completion is imminent, that is F. Carlon et al. (2009, in preparation).

Reference List Style

Format

All sources cited in the text and tables must appear in the reference list at the end of the manuscript, and all entries in the reference list must be cited in the manuscript. Reference entries should be ordered alphabetically, starting with the last name of the first author, followed by the first author’s initial(s), and so on for each additional author. For articles with more than five authors, the last name and initials of the first three authors only should be listed, followed by a comma and “et al.” References listed as “et al.” are grouped together and last, as if the fourth author started with “z”; they are not alphabetized by the name of the actual fourth author. Multiple entries for one author or one group of authors should be ordered chronologically, and multiple entries for the same year should be distinguished by appending sequential lower-case letters to the year, even if the author groups are not identical: e.g., Smith, E., Rowe, T., & Jones, A. B. 1999a; Smith, A. B., Thomas, J. R., & Peebles, P. J. E. 1999b; Smith et al. 1999c.

Except in rare instances (e.g., Icarus) ADS bibliographic codes on the ADS site should be used for the appropriate refereed journal abbreviations. A list of codes for non-refereed publications is also available and should be followed.

The AAS Journal’s BibTeX style file, aasjournal.bst, encodes these reference styles and is provided with our AASTeX 6 release. Detailed LaTeX instructions may be found in the AASTeX 6 Guide

Repositories

Content related to published articles should be archived in persistent repositories and linked to the article through a digital object identifier (DOI). In addition to software published in DOI repositories, our Data Guide details the types of related content that should be archived and linked to the final article through first class citation in the bibliography.

The new AASTeX 6 BibTeX style file supports the current reference list style for digital software or data objects in persistent (“DOI”) repositories as follows:

{author*} {year}, {title}, {version^}, {publisher|howpublished~}, {prefix}:{identifier#}

To illustrate and document this format, we use a corresponding BibTeX entry taken and modified from a real software publication from our Journals. Note that all software/data BibTeX entries should be of the @misc type:

                    @misc{lia_corrales_2015_15991,
      author = {Lia Corrales},
      title = {{dust: Calculate the intensity of dust scattering halos in the X-ray}},
      month = mar,
      year = 2015,
      doi = {10.5281/zenodo.15991},
      version = {1.0},
      publisher = {Zenodo},
      url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15991}
      }

The corresponding reference list entry built with aasjournal.bst would look like:

Corrales, L. 2015, dust: Calculate the intensity of dust scattering halos in the X-ray, v1.0, Zenodo, doi:10.5281/zenodo.15991

General

Authors will be queried for missing, incomplete, or incorrect information in the reference list. It is especially important that authors recheck reference lists after each revision of the text, to be certain that all references cited in the text are in the reference list, and all references given in the reference list are cited. Authors should also check preprint listings, such as arXiv postings, to see if the preprint has been published, or submitted for publication, since the initial preparation of the manuscript.

Examples

Examples are given here of some of the most common citation formats. Except in rare instances (e.g., Icarus) ADS bibliographic codes on the ADS site should be used for the appropriate refereed journal abbreviations. A list of codes for non-refereed publications is also available and should be followed.

Note that many of the electronic resource references are not persistent. The links provided here point to cached versions of the pages by the internet archive.

Journal Article
Martín, E. L., Rebolo, R., & Zapatero Osorio, M. R. 1996, ApJ, 469, 706
Aguirre, J. E., Ginsburg, A. G., Dunham, M. K., et al. 2011, ApJS, 192, 4

Digital Objects
Corrales, L. 2015, dust: Calculate the intensity of dust scattering halos in the X-ray, v1.0, Zenodo, doi:10.5281/zenodo.15991

Software and citable data objects in persistent repositories should include the repository name in addition to the DOI, and the version if appropriate.

Book
Donat, W., III, & Boksenberg, A. J. 1993, The Astronomical Almanac for the Year 1994, Vol. 2 (2nd ed.; Washington, DC: GPO)

Where specific pages of a book are cited, these should be given at the text citation, not in the reference list.

Article or Chapter in an Edited Collection
Huchra, J. P. 1986, in Inner Space/Outer Space, ed. E. W. Kolb et al. (Chicago, IL: Univ. Chicago Press), 65

Conference Proceedings
Salpeter, E. E., & Wasserman, I. M. 1993, ASPC 36, Planets around Pulsars, ed. J. A. Phillips, S. E. Thorsett, & S. R. Kulkarni (San Francisco, CA: ASP), 345

Electronic Conference Proceedings (published only online)
Gomez, M. 2000, in Cosmology 2000, ed. M.C. Bento, O. Bertolami, & L. Teodoro (Lisbon: Inst. Superio Tecnico), 57, http://alfa.ist.utl.pt/~bento/cosmo2000/proc/proceedings.html

Star Catalogs
Hoffleit, D. 1982, The Bright Star Catalogue (New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Obs.)

Electronic Newsletters (published only online)
Hermoso, D. 1996, ESA IUE Electron. Newsl. 46, http://www.vilspa.esa.es/iue/nl/newsl_46.html
Bersier, D., et al. 2004, GCN Circ. 2544, http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/gcn/gcn3/2544.gcn3

Instrument Documentation
Gussenhoven, M. S., Mullen, E. G., & Sagalyn, R. C. 1985, CRRES/SPACERAD Instrument Description, Document AFGL-TR-85-0017 (Hanscom, MA: Air Force Geophys. Lab.)
Spitzer Science Center. 2004, Spitzer Observers’ Manual (Pasadena, CA: SSC), http://sirtf.caltech.edu/

Preprints
Tobin, J. J., et al. 2015, arXiv: 1501.03172, AJ in press
Lockwood, G. W., & Skiff, B. A. 1988, Air Force Geophys. Lab. preprint (AFGL-TR-88-0221)

References to preprints are acceptable only for manuscripts not yet published. Please check the arXiv references in case any of these have been formally published since the manuscript was prepared; if the preprints have not been published, please give the arXiv reference number and the journal to which the work has been submitted or is currently in press.

Manuscripts Submitted or In Press
Wolk, S. J., & Walter, F. M. 1999, AJ, submitted
Wolk, S. J., & Walter, F. M. 1999, AJ, in press

“Submitted” should be used for manuscripts not yet accepted for publication, and “in press” for manuscripts accepted but not yet published.

BibTeX Tips and Tricks

You can quickly get a BibTeX entry for any DOI, e.g., one issued by a third-party software or data repositories,with this simple command:

curl -LH "Accept: application/x-bibtex" http://dx.doi.org/10.5555/12345678

In addition, any DataCite DOI has a human readable metadata page associated with it that is accessible through the URL http://data.datacite.org/<doi>, e.g., http://data.datacite.org/10.5281/zenodo.15991. From here you can download the reference in RIS or BibTeX formats.

If you are using BibTeX entry from sources other than SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System then you should consider the following tips or advice about software/data BibTeX fields and how they translate to a reference in an AAS Journal article:

{author*}
the author field should be formatted to match journal style: last name, first initial, etc.

{version^}
Most BibTeX style files, including the older apj.bst, do not pick up the {version} BibTeX key, and you many have to insert it manually into your final reference. The new aasjournal.bst style file does insert the version tag. This field may or may not even exist for the relevant data/code repository and data object, depending on how it was published. For example, there are no versions in the Zenodo repository (as yet), requiring you to carry version along manually.

{publisher|howpublished~}
Please use the {publisher} key; you may have to add it manually as some repositories do not by default provide BibTeX with this key entered (e.g., Zenodo). Note you can “trick” BibTeX to use the {howpublished} key for the publisher and avoid manually fixing things, but this is not recommended. The new aasjournal.bst style file can correctly parse the {publisher} BibTeX key.

{prefix}:{identifier#}
While in the majority of cases the “prefix” of the data/code persistent identifier will be a “doi”, we reserve the generic model for edge cases, including “hdl”, “arXiv”, “ark”, “purl”, “ivoa”, “abs”, etc. If this were purely a “DOI” field then formal Crossref/DataCite recommendation includes listing the full URI with scheme (e.g., http), host (e.g., dx.doi.org) and path (e.g., /10.5281/zenodo.15991).

In summary, it is important to remember that some of the fields listed above are either not provided by the archives or are listed in the BibTeX but incorrectly recognized and encoded by the most BibTeX style files except new aasjournal.bst style file.