How to format your references using the Astronomy and Computing citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for Astronomy and Computing. 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	Find the style here: output styles overview
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

Kargel, J.S., 2004. Planetary science. Proof for water, hints of life? Science 306, 1689–1691.

A journal article with 2 authors

Class, C., Goldstein, S.L., 2005. Evolution of helium isotopes in the Earth’s mantle. Nature 436, 1107–1112.

A journal article with 3 authors

Watson, E.B., Thomas, J.B., Cherniak, D.J., 2007. 40Ar retention in the terrestrial planets. Nature 449, 299–304.

A journal article with 4 or more authors

Perry, A.L., Low, P.J., Ellis, J.R., Reynolds, J.D., 2005. Climate change and distribution shifts in marine fishes. Science 308, 1912–1915.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Jackson, J., 2012. Political Oratory and Cartooning. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd, Chichester, UK.

An edited book

Göhner, J.F., Jung, E.-M. (Eds.), 2016. Susan Haack: Reintegrating Philosophy, 1st ed. 2016. ed, Münster Lectures in Philosophy. Springer International Publishing, Cham.

A chapter in an edited book

Ippolito, A., Bartolomei, C., 2016. Niccolò Tartaglia (1500c.–1557), in: Cigola, M. (Ed.), Distinguished Figures in Descriptive Geometry and Its Applications for Mechanism Science: From the Middle Ages to the 17th Century, History of Mechanism and Machine Science. Springer International Publishing, Cham, pp. 77–98.

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 Astronomy and Computing.

Blog post

Andrew, D., 2016. Fasting May Improve Cancer Treatment, But Needs Further Exploration [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/fasting-may-improve-cancer-treatment-but-needs-further-exploration/ (accessed 10.30.18).

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, 1993. Digests of Decisions of the Comptroller General of the United States, Vol. IV, No. 6 (No. 149845). 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

Toler, R.L., 2017. Structural Equation Modeling of Advertising Involvement, Consumer Attitude, and Engagement for Video Advertising in a Social Networking Site (Doctoral dissertation). Northcentral University, Scottsdale, AZ.

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

Poniewozik, J., 2017. Fantasy Frenzy? Or Eerie Dreams? New York Times C8.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Kargel, 2004).
This sentence cites two references (Class and Goldstein, 2005; Kargel, 2004).

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

Two authors: (Class and Goldstein, 2005)
Three or more authors: (Perry et al., 2005)

About the journal

Full journal title	Astronomy and Computing
Abbreviation	Astron. Comput.
ISSN (print)	2213-1337
Scope	Computer Science Applications Astronomy and Astrophysics