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:

PaperpileThe citation style is built in and you can choose it in Settings > Citation Style or Paperpile > Citation Style in Google Docs.
EndNoteFind the style here: output styles overview
Mendeley, Zotero, Papers, and othersThe style is either built in or you can download a CSL file that is supported by most references management programs.
BibTeXBibTeX 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
Ghahramani, Z., 2015. Probabilistic machine learning and artificial intelligence. Nature 521, 452–459.
A journal article with 2 authors
Kleizen, B., Braakman, I., 2013. Cell biology. A sweet send-off. Science 340, 930–931.
A journal article with 3 authors
Xie, W., Wang, H., Wu, J., 2014. Similar morphological and molecular signatures shared by female and male germline stem cells. Sci. Rep. 4, 5580.
A journal article with 4 or more authors
Ding, Z., Wu, C.-J., Chu, G.C., Xiao, Y., Ho, D., Zhang, J., Perry, S.R., Labrot, E.S., Wu, X., Lis, R., Hoshida, Y., Hiller, D., Hu, B., Jiang, S., Zheng, H., Stegh, A.H., Scott, K.L., Signoretti, S., Bardeesy, N., Wang, Y.A., Hill, D.E., Golub, T.R., Stampfer, M.J., Wong, W.H., Loda, M., Mucci, L., Chin, L., DePinho, R.A., 2011. SMAD4-dependent barrier constrains prostate cancer growth and metastatic progression. Nature 470, 269–273.

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book
Zhu, F.X.X., Hoehn, R., Thakkar, V., Yuh, E., 2017. Hydroprocessing for Clean Energy. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
An edited book
Bjørndal, E., Bjørndal, M., Pardalos, P.M., Rönnqvist, M. (Eds.), 2010. Energy, Natural Resources and Environmental Economics, Energy Systems. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
A chapter in an edited book
De Boever, J., De Grooff, D., 2010. Examining the Use of Peer-to-Peer Networks from an Activity Perspective, in: Shen, X., Yu, H., Buford, J., Akon, M. (Eds.), Handbook of Peer-to-Peer Networking. Springer US, Boston, MA, pp. 91–114.

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. Meet The Biohackers Letting Technology Get Under Their Skin [WWW Document]. IFLScience. URL https://www.iflscience.com/technology/meet-the-biohackers-letting-technology-get-under-their-skin/ (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, 2000. Telecommunications: GSA’s Estimates of FTS2001 Revenues Are Reasonable (No. AIMD-00-123). 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
Fino, M., 2010. Fruit and vegetable intake and exercise practices of college students of color (Doctoral dissertation). California State University, Long Beach, Long Beach, CA.

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
Dolnick, B., 2017. Cold Showers. New York Times MM26.

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Ghahramani, 2015).
This sentence cites two references (Ghahramani, 2015; Kleizen and Braakman, 2013).

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

  • Two authors: (Kleizen and Braakman, 2013)
  • Three or more authors: (Ding et al., 2011)

About the journal

Full journal titleAstronomy and Computing
AbbreviationAstron. Comput.
ISSN (print)2213-1337
ScopeComputer Science Applications
Astronomy and Astrophysics

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