Is it possible to use the mn2e.bst file in this repository for an article to be submitted to MNRAS?

It would be very nice to have the bibliography style file in CTAN that is linked form the publisher web page replaced by the new version.

The latest version, mnras.bst, incorrectly sorts the bibliography when one of the authors has a surname beginning with a lower case letter. See the attached pdf for an example with "Angulo et al.", "Zwicky" and "de Kool".

The older version, mn2e.bst, correctly sorts the references.

mnras_bst_test.pdf

mnras_bst_test.tex:

\documentclass[usenatbib]{mnras}

\title[Title]{Title}
\author[Author]{Author}

\begin{document}
\maketitle
\begin{abstract}
\end{abstract}
\begin{keywords}
\end{keywords}

\section{Introduction}
\citet{1999NuPhA.656....3A}, \citet{1992A&A...261..188D}, \citet{1933AcHPh...6..110Z}.

\bibliographystyle{mnras}
\bibliography{mnras_bst_test}

\end{document}

mnras_bst_test.bib:

@ARTICLE{1999NuPhA.656....3A,
   author = {{Angulo}, C. and {Arnould}, M. and {Rayet}, M. and {Descouvemont}, P. and {Baye}, D. and {Leclercq-Willain}, C. and {Coc}, A. and {Barhoumi}, S. and {Aguer}, P. and {Rolfs}, C. and {Kunz}, R. and {Hammer}, J.~W. and {Mayer}, A. and {Paradellis}, T. and {Kossionides}, S. and {Chronidou}, C. and {Spyrou}, K. and {degl'Innocenti}, S. and {Fiorentini}, G. and {Ricci}, B. and {Zavatarelli}, S. and {Providencia}, C. and {Wolters}, H. and {Soares}, J. and {Grama}, C. and {Rahighi}, J. and {Shotter}, A. and {Lamehi Rachti}, M.},
    title = "{A compilation of charged-particle induced thermonuclear reaction rates}",
  journal = {\nphysa},
     year = 1999,
    month = aug,
   volume = 656,
    pages = {3-183},
      doi = {10.1016/S0375-9474(99)00030-5}
}

@ARTICLE{1992A&A...261..188D,
   author = {{de Kool}, M.},
    title = "{Statistics of cataclysmic variable formation}",
  journal = {\aap},
 keywords = {Cataclysmic Variables, Main Sequence Stars, Star Formation, White Dwarf Stars, Monte Carlo Method, Stellar Envelopes, Stellar Mass Accretion, Stellar Models, Stellar Orbits},
     year = 1992,
    month = jul,
   volume = 261,
    pages = {188-202}
}

@ARTICLE{1933AcHPh...6..110Z,
   author = {{Zwicky}, F.},
    title = "{Die Rotverschiebung von extragalaktischen Nebeln}",
  journal = {Helvetica Physica Acta},
     year = 1933,
   volume = 6,
    pages = {110-127}
}

Keith T Smith, summarising an email exchange, on 2013 September 5:

7. arxiv numbers and dois are being added to every entry which includes them in the .bib . Whilst I can see why this is attractive to some, MNRAS style is not to include this information, except for

Yes. Elsevier style files do it and I think it's a great idea. DOIs seem to be absolutely perfect because they
unambiguously point to the actual paper.

It would also be great if the MN class file enabled hyperref with approved styling for the links.

I agree that including these links would be helpful, but writing them out in full is not. To access them you need to be on a computer anyway, so a clickable link is fine. See next comment.

I'm not sure what ApJ do. What does "including but not writing mean"? You mean it somehow gets in the PDF?

Yes. ApJ include two clickable links as part of their reference lists: the journal name is clickable and goes to the DOI, whilst the volume and page numbers go to the entry on ADS. See e.g. http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/775/1/1/pdf/0004-637X_775_1_1.pdf (paywall) as an example. I think this is a very good solution and something MNRAS should adopt. But until we do it in the final journal, we shouldn't do it in the latex preprints. hyperref for URLs and clickable citations is something I always do in my own papers, but the final version of MNRAS only has clickable URLs (and they're just black so it's not obvious). I'll definitely raise this at the next board meeting, which unfortunately isn't until March. I'd need to discuss it with the publishers first.

In my latex document I am calling the file with:

\bibliographystyle{/Users/damian/Documents/Thesis/mn2e-bst-master/mn2e} - a direct link to the folder I downloaded in the link below.

However when I run this in Latex it produces reference in the following format.

Alonso-Albi T., Fuente A., Bachiller R., Neri R., Planesas P., Testi L., Bern ́e O., Joblin C., 2009, http://dx.doi.org/10.1051/0004-6361/200810401 A&A, http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2009A

There is no license file. @nxg has taken a look and given the history of apalike.bst and astron.bst determined that the LPPL (standard latex license) is consistent.

The BibTeX 'eprint' field may or may not include an 'arXiv:' prefix, and there may or may not be an 'archivePrefix' field.

Proposed solution:

• If the eprint includes 'foo:', then include it
• If not, and if there's an 'archivePrefix' field, use that
• If not, then use 'arXiv:'

It's probably infeasible to do the string matching in bst-language, so this might be a case for another macro in mn2e.cls

The eprint number isn't being added correctly somehow -- I have this .bib entry:

@ARTICLE{Koss:2014,
   author = {{Koss}, M. and {Blecha}, L. and {Mushotzky}, R. and {Hung}, C.~L. and 
    {Veilleux}, S. and {Trakhtenbrot}, B. and {Schawinski}, K. and 
    {Stern}, D. and {Smith}, N. and {Li}, Y. and {Man}, A. and {Filippenko}, A.~V. and 
    {Mauerhan}, J.~C. and {Stanek}, K. and {Sanders}, D.},
    title = "{SDSS1133: An Unusually Persistent Transient in a Nearby Dwarf Galaxy}",
  journal = {ArXiv e-prints},
archivePrefix = "arXiv",
   eprint = {1401.6798},
 primaryClass = "astro-ph.GA",
 keywords = {Astrophysics - Galaxy Astrophysics, Astrophysics - High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena},
     year = 2014,
    month = jan,
  adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

but using mn2e.bst I get in the .bbl file

\bibitem[\protect\citeauthoryear{{Koss} et~al.,}{{Koss}
  et~al.}{2014}]{Koss:2014}
{Koss} M.,  et~al., 2014, ArXiv e-prints

Is there smomething else I'm supposed to do (an option to turn on) to get the eprint number in the bibliography? On a related note, it seems that it doesn't work with non-arxiv eprints -- for example, the Astronomy Source Code Library bibtex fails:

@MISC{Pontzen:2013,
   author = {{Pontzen}, A. and {Roskar}, R. and {Stinson}, G. and {Woods}, R.
    },
   title = "{pynbody: N-Body/SPH analysis for python}",
   note = {Astrophysics Source Code Library},
   year = 2013,
   archivePrefix = "ascl",
   eprint = {1305.002},
   month = may,
   adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013ascl.soft05002P},
   adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

after running latex and bibtex and running latex the second time, it crashes with

! Extra \fi.
\mn@eprint@ ...c \@tempb \let \@tempb \@tempa \fi 
                                                  \ifx \@tempb \@empty \def ...
l.161 ...for python}, \mn@eprint {ascl} {1305.002}

For an article with more than 8 named authors, mnras.bst gives "Bloggs J., et al., 2016, ..." but MNRAS style looks to be "Bloggs J. et al., 2016, ...", i.e., no comma between the author's initial and "et al.". This applies to authors of articles and editors of conference proceedings.

It seems this can be fixed by removing the comma in line 474 of mnras.bst.

is there a fix for this apart from recompiling bibtex? That's what http://ctan.sharelatex.com/tex-archive/biblio/bibtex/contrib/doc/btxFAQ.pdf suggests, but I don't get this error using a different version of mn2e.bst. Thanks!

This is a log of an email discussion.

Norman: It could get confusing to have multiple versions of this mn2e.bst
knocking around. Can you think of an easy way of getting a changeset
checksum into the file? One way would be to move mn2e.bst to mn2e.bst.in,
edit the latter to the former with a bit of sed magic in a Makefile, and
somehow indicate that it's the resulting file that should be used. But
that's messy. Another possibility is to create a little distribution
tarball with a README and the .bst file, with the checksum edited into it
at that point -- I presume github can host that.

Tim: We can put version numbers in. (the history is already kept up to date in
that file). I'd prefer it if no Makefile was required so that people can
download it directly from the style file.

A possible resolution is to use the ident attribute in gitattributes, as described in this stackoverflow answer. I've never done this myself, but it sounds as if this is the right sort of solution for this particular case, where we're anticipating the mn2e.bst file being deployed right out of the repository, rather than through a release process (which would be over the top for this case).

How does this sound?

It seems that it is not indicated un­der which kind of li­cense this file is distributed. It would be great to have the mn2e latex and bibtex files under an open-source license to be included in the texlive distribution.

ADS sometimes gives page ranges as 'nnn-+' (or as 'nnn+' -- which?). This may or may not be an ADS bug, but we have to cope with it here. The MN style is to give just the starting page number.

It may or may not be feasible to handle this in bst-language.

If the first use of \mniiiauthor is in a \caption, then it is expanded to its 'second-use' form (the '...et al' version), and never expanded to its 'first-use' form. See attachment.