\input texinfo

@dircategory AstroNat * AstroNat: (astronat) BibTeX/natbib for Astronomy journals

Jonathan E. Baker
University of California, Berkeley
jbaker@astro.berkeley.edu

This is a description of the AstroNat software for using the BibTeX to create LaTeX documents suitable for submission to Astronomy journals such as the AAS journals and MNRAS.

These files are based on Patrick Daly's natbib package, which may not be distributed in exchange for money, other than distribution costs. They are provided `as is' and are not guaranteed in any way.

Overview of AstroNat

AstroNat(1) is a collection of LaTeX, BibTeX and Perl software I put together to allow the use of BibTeX to organize bibliographies when writing articles for Astronomy journals. The package not only produces LaTeX files which obey the style rules for the journals, but can also make files which follow the rules for electronic submission. This eliminates a large fraction of the considerable tedium involved in maintaining bibliographies and citations.

The basic idea is to prepare your document using the natbib citation style and a bibliography style file for the journal. Files for electronic submission are then generated using a Perl script which inlines citations and removes the natbib dependencies.

As of AASTeX version 5.0, you no longer need the Perl script to submit to ApJ. But there is still no bibliography style file, so you will need to use the one provided here. Support for PASP conference series has also been added.

Features

Here are some reasons why this is good for you.

• References are stored in a bibliographic database (bib) file in BibTeX format. They can be easily downloaded from the Web (for example the NASA Astrophysics Data System), and never need to be entered into your computer more than once, reducing time spent hunting for typographical errors.
• All knowledge of the particulars of a given journal's style for bibliographic entries is abstracted into the bibliography style (bst) files. This means that correct punctuation and formatting of the bibliography is handled for you. It also means that changing from one journal's format to another becomes a matter of changing two or three lines of your file.
• Only the references which are actually cited in your work are included from the database, so all your references can be stored in a single place and you never have to worry about listing references which are not cited. Large bib files are available on the Web for specific subject areas.
• Natbib has a very general and powerful citation mechanism which can be used to produce a wide variety of author-year citations, again without having to worry about typos or journal style. It also supports the traditional numbered citation style. You can get natbib bibliography style files for a variety of styles other than the ones included here.
• References to the same authors in the same years are automatically labeled with `a', `b', `c', etc. and sorted.
• RefTeX, AucTeX, and other packages provide excellent Emacs/XEmacs interfaces (see section Useful Emacs modes) to BibTeX files.

Of course, these advantages bring some additional complexity along with them: you have to use the additional style files here, learn the natbib cite commands, and use additional passes with latex and bibtex when preparing the document (though Makefiles can do this automatically; an example is included). For electronic submissions, an additional step is required using a Perl script to convert to tex and bbl files which obey the submission rules.

Go to the first, previous, next, last section, table of contents.