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

Baker, M. 2010, Nature, 463, 977

A journal article with 2 authors

McMichael, R. D., & Stiles, M. D. 2008, Science, 322, 386

A journal article with 3 authors

Rai, V. K., Jackson, T. L., & Thiemens, M. H. 2005, Science, 309, 1062

A journal article with 6 or more authors

Kuang, C., Li, S., Liu, W., et al. 2013, Sci Rep, 3, 1441

Books and book chapters

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

An authored book

Hopkins, B. R. 2015, The Law of Tax-Exempt Organizations (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc)

An edited book

Richards, J. A. 2006, Remote Sensing Digital Image Analysis: An Introduction (4th Edition; Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer)

A chapter in an edited book

Innocentini-Mei, L. H., & Fakhouri, F. M. 2013, in Advances in Natural Polymers: Composites and Nanocomposites, ed. S. Thomas, P. M. Visakh, & A. P. Mathew (Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer), 155

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

Andrew, E. 2015, IFLScience (IFLScience), https://www.iflscience.com/space/i-could-sow-seeds-new-civilisation-mars-one-hopeful-s-vision-stellar-future/

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. 1973, Audit by the District of Columbia’s Office of Municipal Audit and Inspection of the Expenditure of Funds by the District of Columbia Public Schools During Fiscal Years 1970 and 1971 (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

Dao, L.-A. T. 2017, Comparison of peripherally inserted intravenous catheter complication prevalence: Before and after changing a 96-hour routine replacement standard (Long Beach, CA: 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

Koblin, J. 2016, New York Times, C3

In-text citations

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

This sentence cites one reference (Baker 2010).
This sentence cites two references (Baker 2010; McMichael & Stiles 2008).

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

Two authors: (McMichael & Stiles 2008)
Three or more authors: (Kuang et al. 2013)

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