The reference list

The reference list should contain all the references cited in the text, ordered alphabetically by surname (with initials following). If there are several references to the same first author, they should be entered according to the following scheme:

1. One author: chronologically


2. Author, one co-author: alphabetically by co-author, then chronologically


3. Author, two or more co-authors: chronologically.

Please note that for papers that have more than five authors, only the first three should be given, followed by "et al."

The A&A format for references is as follows:

• Bohr, N., Einstein, A., & Fermi, E. 1992, MNRAS, 301, 257 (BEF)
• Curie, M., & Curie, P. 1991, A&A, 248, 612
• de Gaulle, C. 1996, Solar Phys. (Oxford Univ. Press, Oxford)
• Heisenberg, W., & West, C. N. 1993, Australian J. Phys., 537, 36 (Paper III)
• Laurel, S., & Hardy, O. 1994, Active Galactic Nuclei, in The Evolution and Distribution of Galaxies, ed. W. Churchill, F. D. Roosevelt, & J. Stalin (Wiley, New York), 210

To set the reference list in the proper A&A format, we encourage you to use BibTeX and the natbib package instead of the standard thebibliography environment.

For extensive description of the general use of BibTeX, please see for example The LaTeX Companion p.757 (Franck Mittelbach and Michel Goosens, second edition).

To use BibTeX, you must:

1. Create a database (.bib) file that describes the articles or books you want to reference. The NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) provides automatic tools for retrieving a .bib file including entries for a selection of articles. An example of a typical .bib file is also provided in the A&A LaTeX macro package.


2. Specify the style and location of the bibliography in your TEX document. The A&A package includes a style file aa.bst that will format your reference list in the proper A&A format. Before running BibTeX you must ensure that the requested files (i.e. bib, bst and sty files) are in the same directory as your TEX files.


3. Run BibTeX then run LaTeX. Remember you must run LaTeX twice to update the citations.

In the TEX file, the references list is enclosed as follows:

\documentclass{aa}
...
\usepackage{natbib}
\bibpunct{(}{)}{;}{a}{}{,} % to follow the A&A style
...
% for the bibliography, at the end
\bibliographystyle{aa} % style aa.bst
\bibliography{Yourfile} % your references Yourfile.bib
\end{document}

References are normally cited in the text by placing the name(s) and the year in parentheses, without any comma between them. If there are two authors for one citation, both names should be given, separated by an ampersand (&). If there are more than two authors, only the first name should be given, followed by "et al.". Commas should be used only to separate two or more years linked with one author (author group). If two or more citations are made in one set of parentheses, they should be separated by a semi-colon. If more than one citation for a particular author (author group) is made for the same year, "a", "b", "c", etc. should be added to the year. If citations are made within the normal running text, only the year(s) should be placed in parentheses. The following examples illustrate the required style:

Authors' initials are permitted only in exceptional cases, for example, to distinguish between two authors with the same surname. Each literature citation made in the text should have a corresponding entry in the References at the end of the paper. For frequently cited papers, an abbreviated form of citation is recommended, e.g., Paper I, Paper II (if appropriate) or by the initial letters of the authors' surnames.

The Natbib package provides citation commands that automatically format the citations in the proper format. The command \citet is to be used for textual citations, while the command \citep is to be used for parenthetical citations. Some examples are given below.

Multiple citations can be made as usual, by including more than one citation key in the \cite command argument.