Incorporating the ApJ referencing style into SAO Assessment

SAO requires the use of the Astrophysical Journal (ApJ) style of referencing in essays and projects. It is a style standard used across the main astronomy research journals. This style is described in:

http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/sao/students/writing/SAOreferencing.xml

... this guide also refers to the original information at the AAS web site:

http://aas.org/journals/authors/common_instruct#references

under the References section.

In most cases of SAO essays and projects the number of references you use will not be large enough to require the use of special reference or bibliographic software useful for listing, inserting and tracking references.

Common usage of such software would be for researchers writing numerous papers on similar topics in which they would often cite the same references, or perhaps for research MSc or PhD students who may have hundreds of references to cite in a large thesis. In our opinion for the majority of SAO essays and projects, and for the majority of SAO students using this software will not be an efficient use of your time.

If you do wish to use such software SAO does not offer support but we can explain what we know about some of these software packages (below).

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EndNote

The EndNote software lists "Astrophysical Journal" as one of the bibliographic styles available in its library. However, in our experience, the ApJ formatting generated by EndNote is frequently inconsistent with the style guidelines described by the Astrophysical Journal on its own website (AAS ApJ style).

We have asked for information about this inconsistency from the writers of EndNote. They replied:

If the style is not correct you can modify it.

In EndNote go to "Edit > Output Styles > Edit 'Astrophysical Journal'".

Here you can correct aspects of the output style.

In our humble opinion this is not acceptable - the ApJ style should be correct in EndNote as supplied!

The Swinburne Library EndNote web page has some general information about EndNote (although a lot of it applies to on-campus students):
http://www.swinburne.edu.au/lib/bibsoft/welcome.htm

There's a link to an online tutorial (written for EndNote version X1 and using the Harvard style, but good for the basics):
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/service/library/tutorials/endnote/index.html

The most current version of EndNote is X2 but the differences between these two versions should be minimal.

Unfortunately, because of licensing restrictions, EndNote software can be made available only to on-campus Swinburne students. The current cost to purchase the package is around $AUD300 — and we would advise you against purchase if you would be using it only for SAO assignments!

For further enquiries, please contact our CAS Liaison Librarian at Swinburne:
Ms Kim Hodgman
Ph: (03) 9124 8407
E: khodgman@swin.edu.au

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LaTeX

You can produce the ApJ style of referencing if you use the LaTeX package. LaTeX is especially powerful in producing complex mathematical equations, tables, etc. There is a steep learning curve for new users.

The ApJ journal web site describes how to use LaTeX via the AASTeX macro package.

For complete information on preparing a manuscript with AASTeX, you should consult the AASTeX home page,

http://aastex.aas.org/

The AASTeX macro package can be obtained at this address.

Additional information on preparing LaTeX manuscripts in Word can be found at

http://aas.org/journals/authors/Word_guidelines

There is a FAQ page at:

http://aastex.aas.org/faq.html

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Zotero

Zotero is a free downloadable program that is a Firefox (browser) extension.

For more information: http://www.zotero.org

It does not appear to have the ApJ style, but it does have a similar style based on the "Chicago Manual of Style (Author-date)" format which is automatically distributed with the Zotero download - see:

http://www.zotero.org/styles

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