SIMBAD: SIMBAD bibliography content


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SIMBAD bibliography content

One of the key features of the SIMBAD astronomical database is the unique coverage of bibliographical references to objects. The bibliographic index contains references to stars from 1950 onwards, and to galaxies and all other objects outside the solar system from 1983 onwards. Presently there are more than 3,200,000 references taken from over 110,000 papers published in the 100 most important astronomical periodical publications and conference proceedings. Articles are scanned in their entirety, and references to all objects mentioned are included in the bibliography. The scanning of the literature was made possible through a collaboration between the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, and the Paris, Bordeaux and Strasbourg Observatories.
A code, called bibcode is assigned to each considered paper. This 19-digit bibcode (Schmitz et al., 1995) contains enough information to locate the article (including year of publication, journal, volume, page, etc.). The structure of this code has been defined in close collaboration with the NED group at NASA/IPAC so that both databases apply the same coding convention (as well as other information systems, such as the NASA ADS, and some of the main journal editors). This is described in list of journals.

When one retrieves the bibliography of a SIMBAD object, a list of bibcodes is given, and (according to the options used) these codes are automatically resolved against a bibliographic file which provides the full reference, title and list of authors for each citation. The link to all SIMBAD objects found in this references may be displayed if the check is on in the form. Also a link to ADS services are available.


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