The SAO Referencing and Citation Style Guide

1. Introduction

This webpage provides a guide to the required way to cite and reference scientific sources in your SAO work (in particular, in essays and projects). Correct and consistent referencing is an integral part of scientific writing. It clearly shows where you have sourced information and allows readers to find this information for themselves quickly.

For scientific sources, we require you to use the style adopted by the Astrophysical Journal (ApJ), one of the leading astronomy research journals. Astronomers often refer to this as the "ApJ style". The complete detailed guide is available at https://journals.aas.org/author-resources/references/. To become more familiar with the style, we suggest you look at some articles of interest from ApJ, available online here, thanks to the Swinburne library.

Please adopt a consistent and common sense approach for more general sources such as periodicals, magazines, print media, websites, film, video, etc., and unpublished materials (which really should be avoided!). Remember that you are referring to these materials to substantiate or augment your arguments and that the readers should be able to locate and verify the information for themselves.

The examples in Sections 2 to 6 (below) illustrate how you should refer to (cite) the work of others within your written text. In Section 8 below is a guide to formatting the complete source details as they appear in the References list (Bibliography). Compare each citation example with its full source details as listed in the final References section below.

Note: All sources cited in the text must be listed in the References, and every entry in the References must be referred to in the text (except for "personal communication", which, although mentioned in the text, would not be listed in the References).

2. Scientific sources: journals, textbooks, conference proceedings, theses, etc.

In brief, within the text of your assignment, you should refer to the work of others by the last name of the first author and the year of publication, as shown in the following examples in the ApJ style.

• single author: (last name and year, without a comma, or year only if the name is part of the sentence)

The new data provided by Bloggs (2004) clearly showed that the answer was 42, confirming his earlier theoretical work (Bloggs 1996). The data were analysed using the IRAF data analysis package (Tody 1993) developed at NOAO.

• two authors: (names joined by an ampersand)

More recently, extensive N-body simulations have derived an answer of 42.007 ± 0.009 (Fluke & Maddison 2008).

• three or more authors: (first author followed by "et al.")

Sunshine et al. (2006) analysed the comet's surface water ice.

Note in this example that "et al." is used in the text when there are three or more authors, but all authors (if no more than five) are listed in the References. However, if there are more than five authors, provide the surname and initials of just the first three authors and add "et al." in the References listing.

• authors with the same last name: (include initials to distinguish)

• citing two or more papers: (citations separated by a semicolon)

More recent studies on small isolated galaxies (Jalali & Hunter 2005; Hinshaw 2008) revealed that...

• two or more papers, same author(s): (dates separated by a comma)

Recent studies on spiral galaxies (Brainy 2006, 2007) showed that...

• two or more papers, same author(s), same year: (use a, b, c, etc., to distinguish papers)

Recent studies on cluster galaxies (Johns 2008a, 2008b) suggested that...

• two or more papers, three or more authors, same year: (as above, a, b, c, ... used to distinguish papers; note that the letters are assigned by their order in the References, which may not necessarily be the same order in which they are cited in the text).

Tammann et al. (2008b) propose a more extensive TRGB calibration of Type 1a supernovae and have also argued that the Cepheid period-luminosity relation may not be unique (Tammann et al. 2008a).

• thesis: (cite in the same way as above)

In an analysis of the distribution of hydrogen in the local universe, Kilborn (2000) searched the HIPASS data.

3. E-prints/Preprints

Many research papers are initially published on the Web prior to being refereed - these are called "electronic preprints" (or "e-prints" for short) or "preprints". The website "arXiv" for e-prints is

https://arxiv.org/

and the astrophysics section is

https://arxiv.org/archive/astro-ph

which is sometimes referred to as "astro-ph". The authors are cited in your text in the same way as above, but note how they appear in the References. See the examples in the Reference section below for Aloisio (2008) and Hinshaw et al. (2008).

4. Websites

We note that several SAO students incorrectly reference websites. To avoid lengthy URLs (web addresses) in the text, create a unique reference instead (with the suffix "web"). For example, "SAOweb" would be appropriate for the Swinburne Astronomy Online Home Page and could be used as follows:

Swinburne Astronomy Online, clearly the best online graduate astronomy program in the world, has taught into more than 35 countries around the globe (SAOweb).

Since webpages can change over time, but journal articles do not, you should include the date you accessed the website in the References list.

SAO deviates from the ApJ style in this regard, with the ApJ style such that websites are not considered appropriate sources of information for inclusion in the Reference section.

5. Other non-refereed periodicals and general sources

For newspaper and magazine articles, films, videos, unpublished seminar presentations, etc., please adopt a consistent and common sense approach to referencing, as these types of sources will not be found in ApJ articles! References to well-regarded but non-refereed journals such as New Scientist, Astronomy Now, Sky & Telescope and so on can be made in the ApJ style.

e.g., James Peebles wrote an article for Scientific American (Peebles 2001), which many people have read and enjoyed.

A comprehensive style guide for sources not covered by the ApJ instructions is available from the APA at https://owl.purdue.edu/.

6. Personal communication

Letters, emails, personal interviews and communications, and other unpublished and unverifiable material should be cited in the text as (B. Rabbit date, personal communication) but not be listed in the References. Remember that these sources are rarely helpful in a scientific paper.

7. Quotations

If you quote text from a trusted source, place it in quotation marks and give the reference and page number from where you obtained it.

According to Norris (2000),

"While quoting material in this way is fine, you must be sure to make it clear that it is a quote. If you quote material but do not make it clear, the person marking it may treat [it] as plagiarism and reduce your marks accordingly. Note that those marking assignments will routinely use search tools to check for plagiarism." (p. 5)

If your quote is greater than 40 words, it is called a block quote and requires indentation (formatted as above). If your quote has less than 40 words, you can include it within your text (a.k.a., a regular direct quote) and is formatted like any other text. For example: "While quoting material this way is fine, you must make sure to be clear that it is a quote" (Norris 2000, p.5). Think carefully about using quotations. Does the quotation add strength to your arguments? A quotation by itself will be likely to add little quality to your submission (or marks to your grade!). Overusing quotations will impact your work's "originality", and graders may assess your submission less favourably.

8. Final comments

Do not merely summarise the writings of others: present your arguments in your own words using references unless quoting directly (see above). A list of references, in alphabetical order by first author, is essential at the end of the work but must only include references referred to in the work. A supplementary reading list is not required. Do not separate your reference list into sections such as texts, journals, websites, etc. Usually, statements about "common knowledge" found in general astronomy textbooks do not require a reference, e.g. "The Sun is a star." Your references should not heavily rely on your Unit textbook, SAO Course Content, or Wikipedia entries (track down the original source). For high marks, you should use higher-standard resources (conference texts, journal papers, e-prints, reputable websites and the like).

9. Listing your references

References are listed alphabetically by the first author's last name (and then chronologically). The names of frequently cited scientific journals can be abbreviated, and a list of these acronyms is provided in the Appendix at the end of this guide, together with more general information about finding the abbreviations used for other publications.

• The general ApJ format for journal papers is as follows.

Lastname, I. Year, Journal abbreviated title, Volume, First page number of the article

• If the volumes are divided into numbers in which the page numbering recommences from 1 with each volume, then the number of the volume will need to be included:

Lastname, I. Year, Publication, Volume (Number), First page

• For articles with two to five authors, all names should be listed, with a comma between authors and an ampersand before the final name:

Firstauthor, F., Secondauthor, S., & Thirdauthor, T. Year, Publication, Volume, First page

• If there are more than five authors, name just the first three authors, followed by "et al."

• Papers submitted but not (yet) accepted for publication should be listed with the journal name and "submitted". Papers accepted for publication should be listed as "in press". These details can be added if the article is available as a preprint. The pre-publication details are superseded once the article has been published, and the journal reference must be used instead. For example, the paper by Maddison et al. (2007) listed below has now been published. Before publication, it had been referenced as a preprint (arXiv:0706.4248v1).

• Where the same author details are listed in sequential references, the second entry can be abbreviated using a long dash, although this need not be applied.

• Please read the ApJ guide for more extensive details about correctly referencing books, collections, conference proceedings, star catalogues, newsletters, instrument documentation, etc.

References

Aloisio, R. 2008, arXiv:0807.0151 (nb. once a work is published, you need to update the entry, replacing the arXiv entry with the publisher details)
Bloggs, F. 1996, MNRAS, 283, 1287
Bloggs, F. 2004, AJ, 128, 45
Brainy, V. 2006, ApJ, 652, 279
Brainy, V. 2007, Natur, 449, 868
Fluke, C., & Maddison, S. T. 2008, ApJ, 42, 7
Hinshaw, G., Weiland, J. L., Hill, R. S., et al. 2008, ApJS, submitted (arXiv:0803.0732)
Jalali, M. A., & Hunter, C. 2005, ApJ, 630, 804
Johns, J. J. 2008a, A&A, 479, 311
Johns, J. J. 2008b, MNRAS, 389, 502
Kilborn, V. A. 2000, PhD thesis, Univ. of Melbourne
Maddison, S. T., Fouchet, L., & Gonzalez, J.-F. 2007, Ap&SS, 311, 3
Norris, R. P. 2000, The Bright Student Almanac, Vol. 3 (Sydney: Galactic Press)
Peebles, P. J. 2001, SciAm, 284(1), 54
SAOweb: Swinburne Astronomy Online Home Page, https://astronomy.swin.edu.au/sao/ (accessed 27 Jan 2010)
Sunshine, J. M., A'Hearn, M. F., Groussin, O., et al. 2006, Science, 311, 1453
Tammann, G., Sandage, A., & Reindl, B. 2008a, ApJ, 679, 52
Tammann, G., Sandage, A., & Reindl, B. 2008b, A&ARv, 15, 289
Tody, D. 1993, in ASP Conference Series 52, Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems II, ed. R.J. Hanisch, R.J.V. Brissenden and J. Barnes (San Francisco: ASP), 173

Appendix

Journal Abbreviations

From https://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs_doc/refereed.html the abbreviations of some commonly cited journals are given:

• A&A – Astronomy and Astrophysics
• A&ARv – Astronomy and Astrophysics Review
• A&AS – Astronomy and Astrophysics Supplement Series
• Afz – Astrofizika
• AJ – The Astronomical Journal
• ApJ – The Astrophysical Journal
• ApJL – The Astrophysical Journal Letters
• ApJS – The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
• Ap&SS – Astrophysics and Space Science
• ARA&A – Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics
• AZh – Astronomicheskij Zhurnal
• BAAS – Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society (AAS Meetings)
• JA&A – Journal of Astrophysics and Astronomy
• MNRAS – Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Natur - Nature
• PASJ – Publications of the Astronomical Society of Japan
• PASP – Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
• QJRAS – Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society
• RMxAA – Revista Mexicana de Astronomia y Astrofisica
• Sci - Science
• SvA – Soviet Astronomy