ADS tools

I like to use ADS, especially in combination with BibTeX. However, collecting BibTeX entries from ADS is a PITA. I wrote some scripts that use the Astro::ADS Perl library to quickly download and update my BibTeX libraries.

You might also be interested in my BibTeX tools.

adsauthor

adsauthor queries ADS on a specified author. It can return BibTeX entries or abstracts.

Prerequisites

In order to satisfy my needs, I had to adapt Astro::ADS a bit. To use my scripts, you will need to patch the Astro::ADS source with this patch.

Download

Download adsauthor.

Usage example

Download a BibTeX library for a specific author, e.g.,

> adsauthor "de Wijn, A.G." -o example.bib

When a library is outdated, you can refresh it:

> adsauthor --update example.bib

You can collect multiple queries in one BibTeX library, and update all queries at once:

> adsauthor "Rutten, R.J." >> example.bib
> adsauthor -u example.bib

You can also download and update abstracts:

> adsauthor --type=abstract "de Wijn, A.G." -o example.abs
adsauthor -u dewijn.abs

You can add entries that are not in ADS to the bib database files in verbatim blocks:

adsauthor verbatim begin

@ARTICLE{notinads,
    author = {{Omebody}, S.},
    title = "{This and That}",
    journal = "{Obscure Astrophysics}"
}

adsauthor verbatim end

hadsauthor

Similar to adsauthor, hadsauthor computes the h-index of a specified author using data from ADS.

Caveats

I cannot guarantee the accuracy of the results of hadsauthor. hadsauthor queries ADS to find papers by the specified author, then uses that list to find the number of citations to each paper. While it is likely that ADS will list those papers that are cited often, the number of citations may be wrong. Also, some authors have published using multiple names, or multiple authors may share the same name. These factors all introduce inaccuracies.

Download

Download hadsauthor.

Usage example

Calculate an H-index:

> hadsauthor "de Wijn, A. G."
de Wijn, A.G.: 16 papers, Hirsch index 6, Hirsch ratio 0.375.

Changelog

Bugs & feature requests

Please send bugreports and feature requests to dwijn at iluvatar.org.