Bibcode

The bibcode (also known as the refcode) is a compact identifier used by several astronomical data systems to uniquely specify literature references.

The bibcode (also known as the refcode) is a compact identifier used by several astronomical data systems to uniquely specify literature references. where YYYY is the four-digit year of the reference and JJJJJ is a code indicating where the reference was published. In the case of a journal reference, VVVV is the volume number, M indicates the section of the journal where the reference was published (e.g., L for a letters section), PPPP gives the starting page number, and A is the first letter of the last name of the first author. Periods ( . ) are used to fill unused fields and to pad fields out to their fixed length if too short; padding is done on the right for the publication code and on the left for the volume number and page number. Page numbers greater than 9999 are continued in the M column. The 6-digit article ID numbers (in lieu of page numbers) used by the Physical Review publications since the late 1990s are treated as follows: The first two digits of the article ID, corresponding to the issue number, are converted to a lower-case letter (01 = a, etc.) and inserted into column M . The remaining four digits are used in the page field. As many publishers are moving away from page numbers and using electronic identifiers more and more frequently, the page field is no longer guaranteed to be numeric. Often an identifier of more than 5 digits is truncated, and there may be letters, periods, dashes, or other characters in the page field as well. The volume field may also contain non-numeric characters. Modern bibcodes are likely to be deprecated in the future, and users should not depend on semantic meaning represented in the bibcode. For the most current information on bibcodes, see the help text for ADS.

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