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Andrew Lyne
Dick Manchester
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This directory contains the pulsar BibTeX database and various associated
files.
Files include:
Journal databases: journals.bib and journals_apj.bib have macros for
journal names as long abbreviations and short ApJ abbreviations,
respectively.
Pulsar databases:
psrrefs.bib. The main pulsar database, kept READ ONLY. It will be
updated occasionally (roughly annually), from the contents
of modrefs.bib.
modrefs.bib. This contains modified items or additions to the
database. To modify an item, the entry in psrrefs.bib should
be copied into modrefs.bib and edited appropriately, with an
explanatory message in the `crtr' field. To add a
new item, use a unique key as described below.
crossrefs.bib. This file contains conference proceedings entries
that are cross referenced in modrefs and psrrefs. These must
be included LAST for BibTeX to properly resolve cross references.
To use the pulsar databases, your LaTeX file should contain the command:
\bibliography{journals_apj,modrefs,psrrefs,crossrefs}
(N.B. the argument order is important).
Gamma-ray burst database: grbrefs.bib. Modifications and
additions can be made directly to this file (there is no
"modrefs" file). Cross references should be added AT THE END
OF THE FILE, not in alphabetical order.
To use the GRB database, your LaTeX file should contain the command:
\bibliography{journals_apj,grbrefs}
The pulsar and GRB databases can be used together, although care is
needed because of duplicated tags. Please avoid duplicate tags
in the future.
Helpful hint:
To minimize the garbage that BibTeX produces with duplicate
entries (which you will have if you have modifications), it is
recommended that you use the following alias for bibtex:
alias bibtex 'bibtex \!:1 | grep -v skipp | grep -v "," | grep -v message'
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
In all of the BibTeX databases, the following rules should be
adhered to:
RULES FOR MAINTAINING THE PULSAR BibTeX DATABASE
1. Keep the entries sorted in alphabetical order, by key if possible.
2. Make all references to journals symbolic. Look in the JOURNALS.BIB file
for a list of the abbreviations, and add further ones if necessary.
3. In an attempt to keep the keys unique use the following rules
a. Single author: use three letters, such as lyn82 for Lyne 1982.
b. Two--four authors: use first letter of authors' surnames, as
in lmt85 for Lyne, Manchester, & Taylor 1985.
c. More than four authors: use first letters of first three
authors' surnames, followed by +, as in hbp+68 for Hewish
et al, 1968.
d. To break ties, use a letter after the year, as in ht75a, ht75b.
e. For multi-word surnames: use the first letter of the first word,
eg "v", not "h" for "van den Heuvel."
4. Follow the general layout of the entries currently used, i.e. put each
field on a new line as it makes it much easier to read.
Always include a title. Note that for conference proceedings and
the like, please define the book as a reference (in crossrefs.bib).
Subsequent entries can then cross reference the book. For an example,
see jwb96 (book) and rlg96 (article). This method reduces the overheads
on future updates, uniforms book definitions, and minimizes typos.
5. When making an entry in modrefs to correct an error in psrrefs, please
add a line
,crct={spell} (or page, volume, etc)
to assist the poor soul who is next to merge the files.
6. If an entry should be deleted, insert a line as follows in the entry.
,deleteme=1
Do NOT delete the entry. It will be deleted at the next collation.
7. Please try to avoid duplicating tags not only within a file but across all
files in this directory. (So if mt77 is used in psrrefs.bib, don't
use it in grbrefs.bib -- use mt77b, etc.) Use the supplied checkref
utility before adding new entries.
If these rules are adhered to then a useful database can be slowly built
up as more people add to it.
Paul Harrison,
revised by J. H. Taylor 1991,
V. M. Kaspi and S. E. Thorsett 1999.
Rule 3e (which, admittedly, contravenes some conventions; sorry!)
added by I. H. Stairs 2011
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Other useful things in this directory:
checkref: a shell script to search through the entries of all BibTeX file
in this directory. Set PSRREFS environment variable to point
to this directory before using.
merge.pl: a perl script (that uses the Text::BibTeX module*)
that will merge bibliography files, sort the result, and identify
duplicate entries.
Note: to use this file, checkout and install the btparse and
BibTeX modules from the CVS archive (just like you checked out
psrrefs). These are slightly modified from the production
versions (to eliminate warning messages for names with embedded
\" characters). Using the production version of Text::BibTeX
will also work.
listall: a shell script to provide a latex listing of all the entries in
psrrefs, permitting a check for syntax and other errors. Due to
the limited capacity of TeX buffers, the database has to be split
into three segments, each limited to about 1900 entries. This
script will fail when the database exceeds about 5700 keys.
Note: to use this, you will need to checkout listall.tex and
listall.bst. For debugging the database, you may find it useful
to study the files listall1.blg, listall2.blg and listall3.blg.
------------------------------------------------------------
CREDITS
This database was built through the hard work of many people (so be
gentle with it!). Sites contributing to the pulsar databases include:
Amsterdam (Ben Stappers)
Arecibo (Paulo Freire)
ATNF (Dick Manchester, Simon Johnston)
NAO-Beijing (Jinlin Han)
Harvard (Bryan Gaensler)
Jodrell Bank (Andrew Lyne, Michael Kramer)
McGill (Vicky Kaspi)
Bryn Mawr (David Nice)
UBC (Ingrid Stairs)
UCSC (Steve Thorsett)
Additional sites contributing to the GRB database include
Caltech (Fiona Harrison)
STScI (Andy Fruchter)
Database merging has been done by several people over the years, major ones
most recently by Vicky Kaspi (Nov 1999), Paulo Freire and Andrew Lyne
(Jan 2003), Dick Manchester (Dec 2005) and Ingrid Stairs (Feb. 2008).
