How to format your references using the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics. For a complete guide how to prepare your manuscript refer to the journal's instructions to authors.

Using reference management software

Typically you don't format your citations and bibliography by hand. The easiest way is to use a reference manager:

Paperpile	The citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNote	Download the output style file
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and others	The style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeX	BibTeX syles are usually part of a LaTeX template. Check the instructions to authors if the publisher offers a LaTeX template for this journal.

Journal articles

Those examples are references to articles in scholarly journals and how they are supposed to appear in your bibliography.

Not all journals organize their published articles in volumes and issues, so these fields are optional. Some electronic journals do not provide a page range, but instead list an article identifier. In a case like this it's safe to use the article identifier instead of the page range.

A journal article with 1 author

Check E. 2003. Nature. 421(6919):102

A journal article with 2 authors

Liemert A, Kienle A. 2013. Sci. Rep. 3:2018

A journal article with 3 authors

Boyce DG, Lewis MR, Worm B. 2010. Nature. 466(7306):591–96

A journal article with 7 or more authors

Tsai AP, Guo JQ, Abe E, Takakura H, Sato TJ. 2000. Nature. 408(6812):537–38

Books and book chapters

Here are examples of references for authored and edited books as well as book chapters.

An authored book

Johnson MD. 2016. Great Myths of Intimate Relationships. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc

An edited book

Chiba S, Tanter É, Bodden E, Maoz S, Kienzle J, eds. 2014. Transactions on Aspect-Oriented Software Development XI, Vol. 8400. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. XIV, 263 p. 78 illus p.

A chapter in an edited book

Park DJ, Yoon M. 2014. In Optimization and Control Methods in Industrial Engineering and Construction, ed H Xu, X Wang, pp. 53–68. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands

Web sites

Sometimes references to web sites should appear directly in the text rather than in the bibliography. Refer to the Instructions to authors for Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Blog post

Luntz S. 2014. Amazing Photographs & Video Of Snake Devouring Crocodile. IFLScience. https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/amazing-photographs-video-snake-devouring-crocodile/

Reports

This example shows the general structure used for government reports, technical reports, and scientific reports. If you can't locate the report number then it might be better to cite the report as a book. For reports it is usually not individual people that are credited as authors, but a governmental department or agency like "U. S. Food and Drug Administration" or "National Cancer Institute".

Government report

Government Accountability Office. 2004. Telecommunications: German DTV Transition Differs from U.S. Transition in Many Respects, but Certain Key Challenges Are Similar. GAO-04-926T, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC

Theses and dissertations

Theses including Ph.D. dissertations, Master's theses or Bachelor theses follow the basic format outlined below.

Doctoral dissertation

Gillaspy KM. 2012. Words of Samsara. Doctoral dissertation thesis. California State University, Long Beach

News paper articles

Unlike scholarly journals, news papers do not usually have a volume and issue number. Instead, the full date and page number is required for a correct reference.

New York Times article

Billard M. 2010. New York Times, July 15, p. E5

In-text citations

References should be cited in the text by name and year in parentheses:

This sentence cites one reference (Check 2003).
This sentence cites two references (Check 2003; Liemert & Kienle 2013).

Here are examples of in-text citations with multiple authors:

Two authors: (Liemert & Kienle 2013)
Three authors: (Boyce, Lewis & Worm 2010)
4 or more authors: (Tsai et al. 2000)

About the journal

Full journal title	Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Abbreviation	Annu. Rev. Astron. Astrophys.
ISSN (print)	0066-4146
ISSN (online)	1545-4282
Scope	Space and Planetary Science Astronomy and Astrophysics