This service provides access to four databases containing more than 2
million abstracts:
astronomy and astrophysics,
instrumentation,
physics and geophysics,
and the
Los Alamos preprints in Astronomy.
Users can use one of the available query
forms to submit queries by author, object name,
date range, words in the title, and words in the abstract text.
The resulting list of bibliographic records is ranked by how closely each
record matched the query.
From this list, users can obtain on a record by record basis all the
information available about a particular bibliographic entry
(including the bibliographic code, title, authors, author
affiliations, journal reference, publication date,
category, origin, keywords, and abstract text).
Please note that all abstracts and articles in the ADS are copyrighted
by the publisher, and their use is free for personal use only.
For more information, please read our page detailing the
Terms and Conditions regulating the use
of our resources.
Contents of this document:
You may also want to check our list of
Frequently Asked Questions.
If you have comments or questions about the Abstract Service,
please don't hesitate to
send
us feedback.
If you wish to acknowledge us in a publication, kindly use a
phrase such as the following: "This research has made use of
NASA's Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services." Thanks!
The abstracts database contains data from several sources, including
NASA's Scientific and Technical Information group (STI), journal publishers
SIMBAD, NED, and OCR'd from table of contents (ApJ, ApJL, AJ, PASP). We
will be adding more data provided directly by the journals as agreements
are reached with them individually. All abstracts include an "Origin" field
which details where a given abstract came from. In cases where we have the
same paper from multiple sources, the priority order is defined as listed
above. It should be noted that we no longer receive data from STI, but that
those abstracts in the system from STI are rewritten versions of the
original author abstract. If we also have the original author abstract, a
link to that is provided.
We welcome you to submit original author abstracts to us. Please use
the Submit Author
Abstract Form..
The data from STI includes papers from the following six astronomical
categories:
88 Space Sciences (General)
89 Astronomy
89-01 Solar Astronomy
89-02 Stellar Astronomy and Cosmology
89-03 Meteors and Meteorites
90 Astrophysics
90-01 Gravitation
90-02 Astrophysical Plasmas
91 Lunar and Planetary Exploration
91-01 The Moon
91-02 Planetary Sciences and Exploration
92 Solar Physics
93 Space Radiation
93-01 Cosmic Radiation
93-02 Solar Radiation and Activity
93-03 Radiation Belts
The database contains abstracts from hundreds of publications, colloquia,
symposia, proceedings, and internal NASA reports. These sources cover
diverse loosely astronomy-related
subjects, ranging from Electrical Engineering through Optics to
Particle Physics. They include the larger American astronomical
journals: Astron. J., Astrophys. J., Icarus, Pub. Astron. Soc. Pac.
etc, and Non-American: Astron. & Astrophys, Mon. Not. Roy. Ast. Soc.,
Pub. Astron. Soc. Japan / Australia / India, Astrophys. J. Soviet
Union / Australia / Ireland, etc., as well as more general interest
journals such as Science, New Scientist, Nature, Mercury, Sky and
Telescope. Complete coverage is only guaranteed for those abstracts provided
to us directly by the journal publishers.
Click on our
Journal Abbreviation List to see a full list of journals and their bibcode
stems.
Click on our Bibliographic Code
Help to see a description of bibliographic codes and accession numbers.
Click on our List
of Origins to find our more about where some of our data comes from.
Journal papers may be ordered from the Center for Aerospace Information (CASI).
The Abstract Query Form provides basic access into the ADS abstracts
database. The query form is divided into 3 sections: The main
search parameters, the filters, and the settings. To create a query, fill
in any or all of the following fields: (ALL FIELDS ARE CASE-INSENSITIVE!).
- Authors
- Authors may be entered one per line, or on the same line
separated by semi-colons. Authors may be entered by last
name only, or by last name and first initial. Any of the
following will work:
smith, a.
smith, a
smith,a.
smith,a
If a full first name is entered, only the first initial
will be used by default. To search for middle initials of
authors, use the
Exact Author search capability.. The list of authors may be searched
by doing a
List Query.
Note that authors whose last names contain an umlaut may
be entered under both possible English spellings (e.g. Boehm and Bohm).
- SIMBAD/NED/LPI Object Names
- Object names may be entered one per line, or on the same
line separated by semi-colons. The object name query
first searches a list of LPI object names, then queries
the SIMBAD and NED SIMBAD bibliography databases and
returns a list of papers which are about the object(s).
To get a list of object aliases, enter an object name in
the appropriate window of the List Query.
- Date
- The "Publication Date" should be entered as two integers in the form MM
and YYYY (e.g. 12 and 1988). For those cases when there was no month
available, the month is entered in the database as 00.
If no date is entered, the program will default to the full date range.
If no "From" month is entered the program will enter a default value of
00. If no "To" month is entered the program will enter a default
value of 12.
- Title
- This allows the user to search on words found in the
title of the paper. A checkbox for boolean logic allows
combinations the use of boolean logic
constructs.
- Abstract Text
- This allows the user to enter any combination of words
or sentences he or she chooses. The search will be
done on individual words (except for some of the most
common English words such as "the", "a", and "and").
This is extremely useful for entering the text of an
abstract from a previous query to find all the papers
most related to that paper. Note, all title words and
keywords are also indexed together with the abstract
text words. A checkbox for boolean logic allows
combinations the use of boolean logic
constructs.
The filters sections allows the user to further modify the search.
- Entry Date
- The "Entry Date" allows the user to select data which has been entered in
the database since a given date. Entering "-31" in the "Day"
field will select all new entries in the past month.
- Minimum Score
- The "Minimum Score" allows the user to select data which has a score
greater than the entered minimum score. This is most useful
when used in conjunction with the entry date. See the "What's New Service" described below.
- Select References From
- The default setting returns all abstracts which fit the query criteria.
To select only those journals which are refereed (i.e. omit abstracts
from things such as conference proceedings, BAAS, and IAUC), choose
the "Select from all refereed journals" option. Alternatively, users
may choose only from specific journals by choosing "Select journals:" and
entering the journal(s) bibstems (separated by a space). To use the
"selected journals" field, you must know the abbreviation for the journal,
which is listed in the journal
abbreviations file. The journal abbreviation can be prepended
with a '-'. This will return only references that are not from
the specified journal(s). Multiple journal abbreviations can be
specified by separating them with ';'.
- Select References With
- This allows users to select references which contain any information, or
only selected information, such as full article text, original
author abstracts, electronic versions, data tables, etc.
To change the logic within a field or between fields, you need to
Change the Settings.
The settings section allows the user to change default query conditions such
as the logic of the query. The following may be changed:
- Relative Weights
- This is the relative weighting
of the fields used in calculating the scores. If you want to
give more weight to the authors than the keywords, for example,
these numbers would be changed. It is also possible to make
one of these fields 0.0, in which case that item will not be
considered when the relative scores of each abstract are
calculated (the "scores" are descriptions of how well a given
abstract matches the query conditions, normalized to 1.0).
- SYNONYM REPLACEMENT
- If this is turned on, the standard term list will be used to
replace words. This corrects for misspellings in the abstract text
or author names, and equates words such as "accelerate", "accelerated",
and "acceleration".
It is also possible to turn synonym replacement on or off for individual
words within a query. By default, synonym replacement is done for all
words. To exclude a word from synonym replacement, use
the "=" sign before that word (to exactly match that word and no synonyms).
If you have turned off synonym replacement but want it on for a given word,
use the "#" sign before the word.
- SIMPLE LOGIC QUERIES
- The simple logic recognizes '+' and '-' before the words. To require a
word to be found in a search, it needs a '+' in front of it. A '-' before a
word indicates that only references that do NOT contain that word should be
returned. AND , OR, NOT are stopwords and will be ignored in the simple
logic.
Example: "+contact +binaries -eclipsing"
Note that if you want to exclude a word, it is best if it is not the first
or only word listed in the search. This requires every abstract in the
system to be returned, before the excluded word can be found and omitted
from the returned abstracts.
It is also possible to turn synonym replacement on or off for individual
words within a query. By default, synonym replacement is done for all
words. To exclude a word from synonym replacement, use
the "=" sign before that word (to exactly match that word and no synonyms).
If you have turned off synonym replacement but want it on for a given word,
use the "#" sign before the word.
- FULL BOOLEAN QUERIES
- This allows more complex queries than just combining all words with
"OR" or "AND". The allowed boolean operators are: "and", "or", "not", "(",
and ")". They can be used in any combination (as long as "(" and ")"
match). For example the query "(redshift or survey) and not galaxy"
finds all references that contain either "redshift" or "survey", but
not "galaxy". The order of precedence of the operators is "(...)",
"not", "and", "or". For larger numbers of search terms, this type of
search will be slower than regular searches, especially if the "not"
operator is used. For full boolean author searches, the syntax is
somewhat awkward. Each operator has to be on a separate line. This
includes the "(" and ") operators. Regular scoring is done on any
terms that are combined with "or". "and" and "not" combinations are
scored as 1.
- USE FOR WEIGHTING?
- This determines if the field should be used in calculating the
scores. If this is turned on, then this search field (authors,
keywords, etc) will be included in the calculation for the total
score of each abstract. If it is not turned on, the search field
will be used for selection as specified in the other flags but will
be ignored for the score calculation. This serves two main functions,
to selectively turn off portions of a complex query without editing
the query, and in conjunction with the REQUIRE FIELD FOR SELECTION
flag to permit a Boolean search on a field to be combined with a relevancy
ranking.
- WEIGHTED SCORING
- This sets how the score for each abstract is calculated. If this
is not turned on, the scoring is "straight"; each query condition that is
met (a "hit", e.g. if the abstract contains a keyword specified in the
query) receives a score of 1 (before normalization). If this is turned on,
the scoring is "weighted"; the score for a "hit" is the inverse log of the
frequency of the specified condition (e.g. keyword) in the total database.
This gives a higher score to "hits" of rarely used words since they are
presumably a stronger search criterion.
- REQUIRE FIELD FOR SELECTION
- This determines how the words across fields are combined. If
this is turned on, an abstract will only fulfill a query when the
given field conditions are met. For example, if you give an author
and set this to "yes" in the author Query Settings, all abstracts
which are retrieved must contain that author. When this is not turned
on, abstracts which do not contain that author, but which meet
other conditions in the query will also be returned.
When the query has been set up to your satisfaction, press Send
to send the query.
When the query has finished, a ranked list of
papers that fulfilled the query requirements is returned. To view
more information on a given paper, click on the bibliographic code.
Or select the checkbox for those papers of interest and use the
"Retrieve Selected Abstracts" button at the bottom of the page.
If you would like to see more than the first 50 references, change
the appropriate numbers on the query form.
Assume there is a list of desired authors in the
author field in the Abstract Query window. Assume that one wants
papers where at least one of the desired names is an author, but does
not want the paper to appear more relevant if more than one desired
author is a co-author. In the Author Query Settings window, you
would turn off USE FOR WEIGHTING, turn off REQUIRE FIELD FOR SELECTION,
and turn on REQUIRE FIELD FOR SELECTION which would allow the rest
of the query to determine the relevancy score.
The abstract server has a number of features which have been developed
in order to improve searching the dataset. These include the use of
synonyms, stop words, and word translations.
By default, each search term specified in the title, abstract, or
author query field triggers a search for all the term's synonyms as
well as the term itself. The use of synonym searches for text words
has been established to equate different tenses of the same verb, different
genders of the same name, as well as different words with the same meaning.
In addition, we use synonyms to perform foreign language translations,
to equate foreign words with their English counterpart. This feature can
be turned off by modifying the default settings.
For authors, synonym replacement allows the user to search on an author's
name and get back any alternative or incorrect spellings of which we are
aware. For example, the author synonymn pair "A'HEARN, M" and "AHEARN, M"
allows users to search on either spelling and
retrieve abstracts which contain either spelling. If you are aware of
an author name, misspelling, or foreign word translation which does not
seem to be working correctly, please inform us by email to ads@cfa.harvard.edu
We maintain a list of stop words
which are words that are removed from queries before they are processed.
These are words commonly used in the English language with great
frequency, as well as adverbs, prepositions and any other words not carrying a
significant meaning when used in a scientific context.
Last, we perform word translations for certain terms or patterns which
are conventionally written in a few different ways. This is most
commonly done with astronomical object names (e.g. "M 31" and "M31"),
as well as some composite words (e.g. "X RAY", "X-RAY" and "XRAY").
The list of words which are currently translated is
available.
If you are aware of others which should be included, please inform
us by email to ads@cfa.harvard.edu
There are two ways to get table of contents information. You can get
to both of these query forms through the link "TOC_QUERY" from the
main query page.
To get the latest Tables of Contents of a selected set of journals you
can use the Table of Contents Page. This page
has the images of cover pages of a selected set of journals. By
clicking on one of these cover pages you get the table of contents of
the latest issue of that journal. There is also a
user customized version of this form
available. It will display only the journals for which information is
available that you have not yet read. You can select which journals
should be included in the form from the preferences
page.
To obtain a list of articles which appear in a major journal by
month/year or volume,
you can do a Table
of Contents Query. Select the year, month or volume number for
the desired journal. A Table of Contents query generates a list of
references for the papers available from the specified journal in the
specified time range or volume.
If the button named "LAST ISSUE(S)" is instead pressed, only the
references with the most recent publication date (month and year) are
shown. These typically include papers published in the latest issue
or last few issues of the journal.
Note that we have complete table of contents only for those journals
which we are scanning and putting full journal articles online
(ApJL, ApJ, AJ, PASP). For these journals, the month filter will work
as expected. For the other journals, a toc query will return only
what is in our database (not necessarily complete), and the month
filter will not work as expected.
To obtain a list of articles which appear in a minor journal or
conference proceedings, you need to obtain the partial bibliographic
code from the list of journals
and do a Bibliographic
Code Query.
The Query Results window contains a list of all abstracts which fulfilled
the input query. This list contains the bibliographic code, score,
publication date, authors, title, and list of
available items.
To save or print this summary list, use the features provided in the File
menu of your browser, or use the options at the bottom of the screen.
To retrieve the rest of the abstract information (including journal
reference, author affiliations, keywords, and abstract text), you have one of
the following options:
- Click on a bibliographic code link to see information for individual
abstracts.
- Click on selection boxes to the left of each bibliographic code for
which you would like to see the abstract. Press "Retrieve Selected
Abstracts" at the bottom of the list.
- Click on the "Retrieve all References" selection box at the
bottom of the results list to retrieve all the references
listed in the results window. Press "Retrieve Selected
Abstracts" at the bottom of the list.
The selected references can be returned in a variety of formats:
- HTML, for viewing on your browser (default).
- Plain text, for printing or saving to a file.
-
BibTeX, for inclusion in LaTeX documents (e.g. the manuscripts
submitted electronically using the
AASTeX
macro package).
- Tagged format, for use with database programs and system
- Custom format, for creating your own customized output.
Please note that the BibTeX references make user of standard
macros for identifying the popular
journals.
This feature shows at a glance what items are available for a particular
abstract. This allows the user to see, for example, which articles have
abstracts or full text articles available. The following abbreviations
are used:
- A: NASA/STI Abstract or Original Author Abstract Available
- C: Citations Available (references that cite that article)
- D: Data Table Available
- E: Electronic Version Available
- F: Full Article Available in PDF or Postscript format
- G: Full Article Available in GIF format (page by page)
- I: Author Comment is Available
- L: Information available from Library of Congress
- M: Article is available for purchase through the mail
- N: Source Information available from NED
- O: Other associated articles
- P: PDS (Planetary Data Systems) Information Available
- R: References Available (references cited by that article)
- S: Source Information available from CDS
- T: Table of Contents Search available
- U: Users also read these articles
- X: Data from Planetary Nebulae database available
Through this feature, the ADS Abstract Service provides the
capability of finding all relevant abstracts in the database.
This is done by modifying the query based on the results of a
previous query. This feature is only available for individually
retrieved abstracts.
- Select the fields that you would like to use to update the query.
This will create a new query, inserting the values of the fields from
the results of the most recent query. Choose from:
- 1. Authors
- 2. Keywords
- 3. Title
- 4. Abstract Text
- Choose what you would like returned.
- 1. Query Results: The new query will be submitted, and the list of
abstracts which fulfill that query will be returned.
- 2. Query Form: The new query will be set up, and the query form will
be returned. Further modifications may be entered in the query form, then
press "send" to submit the query.
WARNING: A very long query can take several minutes to return. One can speed
the query up substantially by limiting the date range in the Query Form.
We have enhanced the ADS Abstract Service with the capability of searching
the database for recent entries. This service allows the user to conduct
searches of the abstract database for all new abstracts which fulfill his
or her favorite query. The service can be used through the WWW or through
email, and can be automated to return all new entries within a specified
period (such as the last month).
To use this service:
- 1. Build the query:
-
Use the WWW interface to build a query by repeatedly executing it until
the desired result is returned. If you do not have WWW access, you can
request the query form by email to "adsquery@cfa.harvard.edu". A message
body containing "help" will provide some assistance. To set up a query,
the message body should include:
action=http://ukads.nottingham.ac.uk/abstract_service.html
method=get
return=form
This returns the form with hyperlinks surrounded by "@"
signs. To follow a hyperlink, uncomment the appropriate one
in the section which begins "Start of hyperlinks". To submit
the form, fill out the form in the section which begins
"Begin of Form 1" by filling in search criteria after the "="
signs.
- 2. Save the query form:
-
Request that the query form be returned for this query by selecting
"Return Form" in the Build Query Form section below the send button.
A negative number in the "Entry Date" day field determines how far
back the query goes. For example, to get any entries in the last
month, use -31.
- 3. Use the form:
-
This form can be used either through the WWW by opening it in the
browser (or saving it in your hotlist) with the syntax:
file:/directory/filename
or it can be used to execute an e-mail query by typing:
mail adsquery@cfa.harvard.edu < /directory/filename
If you are on a Unix machine, you can set up a crontab file which will
automatically send this email message at specified intervals. To enable
this feature, edit your crontab file by issuing the command "crontab -e"
and entering the following:
0 24 1 * * mail adsquery@cfa.harvard.edu < /directory/filename >/dev/null
where /directory/filename is the name of your saved query file.
This will execute the query on the first of every month and query back for
31 days (if the day field contains -31).
You can help improve our service! If you have comments for us, please
submit them through our feedback form.
We always welcome comments and suggestions for improvements.
We now provide a form for authors to supply papers which are missing
from the abstract service. Please use the
submission form and include
as much information as possible.
In addition, you can supply author comments about papers for which you are
an author. This comment will be linked to the abstract so that it will
be displayed whenever the paper in question is retrieved by a user.
This is a useful way to incorporate errata or make additional information
available. The author comments should be submitted through our
forms interface.
These comments can be plain text or fully formatted html documents.
They can include comments about the abstract, clarifications or more
extended descriptions, and links to other abstracts and documents.
We reserve the right to edit or reject any author comments that are
inappropriate. For an example of an author comment, see Mike Kurtz's
PhD Thesis.
If you wish to acknowledge us in a publication, kindly use a
phrase such as the following: "This research has made use of
NASA's Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services." Thanks!
More information about the ADS project is
available,
or you can
send e-mail
to us at ads@cfa.harvard.edu.