Using BibTeX entries generated by ADS

• The AASTeX package (v6.0 and above), used by the journals of the American Astronomical Society.
• The MNRAS package (v3.0 and above), used by Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
• The A&A LaTeX macros (v9.0 and above), used by Astronomy & Astrophysics.
• The ASPC macros (v.2014 and later) used by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific Conference Series.
• The APS REVTeX package (v.4.0 and later) used by the journals of the American Physical Society.

Compatibility with Earlier versions

Support for BibTeX in earlier LaTeX macro packages was provided informally via a modified version of the apj.bst style file from Jonathan Baker's AstroNat package. Use of the package allowed the easy inclusion of ADS BibTeX records in manuscripts prepared for all the AAS journals as well as A&A and MNRAS. While this bst file is not officially supported any longer, we provide the following information for historical purposes.

Here is an example LaTeX document which uses the macros in question: aas_ex.tex:

\documentclass{aastex}  % version 5.0 or prior
\usepackage{natbib}
\bibliographystyle{apj}
\begin{document}

Here is a reference to a paper in Annual Reviews: \cite{1974ARA&A..12..279Z}.

\bibliography{adssample}
\end{document}

@ARTICLE{1974ARA&A..12..279Z,
  author = {{Zuckerman}, B. and {Palmer}, P.},
  year = 1974,
  title = {{Radio radiation from interstellar molecules}},
  journal = {\araa},
  volume = 12,
  pages = {279--313},
  url = {https://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1974ARA%26A..12..279Z&db_key=AST},
  adsnote = {Provided by the NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

We can now run latex (or pdflatex) and bibtex as usual on the input file to generate a DVI (or PDF) file:

pdflatex aas_ex
bibtex aas_ex
pdflatex aas_ex
pdflatex aas_ex

Rolling your own style file

For the more adventurous users interested in creating PDF or HTML documents from their latex source which include links to online records in ADS, there are some packages out there that can be used for this purpose. The ones we have tested and reccommend are hyperref and pdflatex, which are capable of creating PDF files containing hyperlinks. Both packages are available from CTAN (the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network).

In order to make use of the URLs contained in the Bibtex files created by ADS, you need to use a bibtex style file that inserts the URL field in the output dvi file. One of such style file is the plainnat format that comes with the natbib package. Alternatively, you may want to try a syle file that I created by hacking the original apj.bst from AstroNat. I called the file astroads.bst because it formats the references according to the well-estabilished syntax in use in astronomy but it is tweaked to create links with an ``[ADS]'' label for all entries generated by ADS. If you're interested, please download the following files and give it a try:

• astroads.bst: the bibtex style file.
• astroads_ex.tex: an example latex file.
• adssample.bib: the bibliographic entries used in astroads_ex.tex

pdflatex astroads_ex
bibtex astroads_ex
pdflatex astroads_ex
pdflatex astroads_ex