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

Bonetta, L. 2006, Nature, 439, 1017

A journal article with 2 authors

Wang, Y., & Robinson, G. H. 2011, Science, 333, 530

A journal article with 3 authors

Day, J. M. D., Pearson, D. G., & Taylor, L. A. 2007, Science, 315, 217

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Vlasov, Y. A., Bo, X. Z., Sturm, J. C., & Norris, D. J. 2001, Nature, 414, 289

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Lewin, M. D. 2007, Better Software Project Management: A Primer for Success (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.)

An edited book

Kim, K. C. 2014, Robotics in General Surgery (New York, NY: Springer)

A chapter in an edited book

Jinpa, T., & Reddy, B. V. R. 2016, in Intelligent Systems Technologies and Applications: Volume 2, ed. S. Berretti, S. M. Thampi, & S. Dasgupta (Cham: Springer International Publishing), 45

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

Hale, T. 2016, IFLScience (IFLScience), https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/40-dead-tiger-cubs-have-been-found-thai-tiger-temples-freezer/

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, Aerial Refueling Initiative: Cross-Service Analysis Needed To Determine Best Approach (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

Fleming, T. C. 2015, The Academic Identity Experience of Liberal Arts Faculty in the Age of New Managerialism (Washington, DC: George Washington University)

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

Lee, L. 2013, New York Times, D2

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Bonetta 2006).
This sentence cites two references (Bonetta 2006; Wang & Robinson 2011).

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

Two authors: (Wang & Robinson 2011)
Three or more authors: (Vlasov et al. 2001)

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