Using natbib with AASTeX

AASTeX allows authors to Patrick Daly’s natbib package to manage citations. The natbib package re-implements LaTeX’s \cite command, and offers greater flexibility for managing citations in the author-year form. A copy of the natbib style file is included with the AASTeX package. Authors are encouraged to read the natbib documentation for complete details on the package’s capabilites. All examples in this document are adapted from the natbib documentation.

Authors must use the LaTeX’s thebibliography environment to use the natbib extensions. Here is a bibliography with two entries marked up in the natbib style:

\begin{thebibliography}{}

\bibitem[James et al.(1991)]{jam91} James, H. ...

\bibitem[Jones et al.(1990)Jones, Baker, and Williams]{jon90} Jones, J. ...

\end{thebibliography}

The square-bracketed argument contains the “author” portion of the citation followed by the year in parentheses. The parentheses are important, so do not leave them out. Note that in the second \bibitem, the square-bracketed argument includes two author lists, a short version before the year and a long version after. Authors should use this form of the markup if they wish to use the * forms of the \cite commands. (See the examples below.)

The text in the curly-brace argument of the \bibitem is the citation key and should be used as the argument in the corresponding cite commands in the text. The two basic text citation commands are \citet and \citep. (\citet corresponds to the plain LaTeX \cite command.) Use the two optional arguments to append text before or after the citation—text in the first set of square brackets will appear before the cite, text in the second set will appear after it. Use the * form of the cite commands to print the long version of the author lists for references that have been marked up in the manner of the “jon90” example.

Here are some \citet and \citep examples taken from the natbib package documentation:

Command Output
\citet{jon90} Jones et al. (1990)
\citet[chap.~2]{jon90} Jones et al. (1990, chap.~2)
\citep{jon90} (Jones et al., 1990)
\citep[chap.~2]{jon90} (Jones et al., 1990, chap.~2)
\citep[see][]{jon90} (see Jones et al., 1990)
\citep[see][chap.~2]{jon90} (see Jones et al., 1990, chap.~2)
\citet*{jon90} Jones, Baker, and Williams (1990)
\citep*{jon90} (Jones, Baker, and Williams, 1990)
\citet{jon90,jam91} Jones et al. (1990); James et al. (1991)
\citep{jon90,jam91} (Jones et al., 1990; James et al. 1991)
\citep{jon90,jon91} (Jones et al., 1990, 1991)
\citep{jon90a,jon90b} (Jones et al., 1990a,b)

Alternatively, use \citealt and \citealp to produce a cite without parentheses:

Command Output
\citealt{jon90} Jones et al. 1990
\citealt*{jon90} Jones et al., 1990
\citealp*{jon90} Jones, Baker, and Williams, 1990
\citealp{jon90,jam91} Jones et al., 1990; James et al., 1991
\citealp[pg.~32]{jon90} Jones et al., 1990, pg.~32

Finally, the \citeauthor and \citeyear commands can be used to print only the author or year portion of the citation:

Command Output
\citeauthor{jon90} Jones et al.
\citeauthor*{jon90} Jones, Baker, and Williams
\citeyear{jon90} 1990
\citeyearpar{jon90} (1990)