How to format your references using the The Astronomical Journal citation style

This is a short guide how to format citations and the bibliography in a manuscript for The Astronomical Journal. 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

Gershon, D. 2000, Nature, 407, 657

A journal article with 2 authors

Schwartz, T. W., & Sakmar, T. P. 2011, Nature, 477, 540

A journal article with 3 authors

Newell, R. G., Pizer, W. A., & Raimi, D. 2014, Science, 343, 1316

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Bourgoin, M., Ouellette, N. T., Xu, H., Berg, J., & Bodenschatz, E. 2006, Science, 311, 835

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Carvalho, M. C. 2016, Practical Laboratory Automation (Weinheim, Germany: Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA)

An edited book

Yli-Jyrä, A., Kornai, A., Sakarovitch, J., & Watson, B. 2010, Finite-State Methods and Natural Language Processing: 8th International Workshop, FSMNLP 2009, Pretoria, South Africa, July 21-24, 2009, Revised Selected Papers, Vol. 6062 (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer)

A chapter in an edited book

Hull, E., Jackson, K., & Dick, J. 2011, in Requirements Engineering, ed. K. Jackson, & J. Dick (London: Springer), 93

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 The Astronomical Journal.

Blog post

Andrews, R. 2016, IFLScience (IFLScience), https://www.iflscience.com/environment/a-new-volcano-may-be-emerging-beneath-a-small-new-zealand-town/

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. 2011, Federal Chief Information Officers: Opportunities Exist to Improve Role in Information Technology Management (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office)

Theses and dissertations

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

Doctoral dissertation

McPeek, S. E. 2017, Religious Rhetoric and the Radio: The Sermons of Rev. Dr. Oswald C.J. Hoffmann, International Lutheran Hour Speaker, 1955-1985 ( Lafayette, LA: University of Louisiana)

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

Oestreich, J. R. 2017, New York Times, C2

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Gershon 2000).
This sentence cites two references (Gershon 2000; Schwartz & Sakmar 2011).

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

Two authors: (Schwartz & Sakmar 2011)
Three or more authors: (Bourgoin et al. 2006)

About the journal

Full journal title	The Astronomical Journal
Abbreviation	Astron. J.
ISSN (print)	0004-6256
ISSN (online)	1538-3881
Scope	Space and Planetary Science Astronomy and Astrophysics