AIAA Citation Format and Generator: A Complete Guide

AIAA citation format is the numbered reference system of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, used by its journals, its conference papers, and most aerospace engineering departments. You cite a source in the text with a number in square brackets, such as [4], and list the full reference under that number at the end of the paper, in the order the sources first appear. Whether you format each entry by hand or with an AIAA citation generator, the rules below are the ones AIAA publishes, with every source type its own guide covers and the cases it leaves open.

To format a reference automatically, use the AllCitations AIAA generator. The rest of this guide shows you what the output should look like, so you can check it.

The official AIAA citation rule

AIAA does not publish a citation manual as a separate book. The authority is the AIAA Reference Style and Format page, which sets the rules for every AIAA journal and gives 18 numbered example references. University library guides on AIAA style summarize or link to that page, so when a handout and the page disagree, follow the page.

Four rules on that page shape everything else:

1. Numbered in order of citation. "All references must be numbered and cited in numerical order in the text." The first source you cite is [1], the second new source is [2], and a source you cite again keeps its original number.
2. Readily accessible material only. References are limited to published material a reader can get from a library, a database, or another public source. Classified or export-restricted documents, private communications, personal websites, and websites with no commitment to archiving go in the text or a footnote. They do not get a reference number.
3. Cite the original. AIAA asks you to reference the original source of a work and avoid secondary sources. If a textbook quotes a 1975 NASA report, you find and cite the report.
4. Complete entries. The page lists what authors most often leave out: every author's name (no "et al." in the reference list), full journal and book titles with no abbreviations, inclusive page numbers, volume and issue numbers, the location of report sponsors, and full publishing details for proceedings.

AIAA also says to "spell out everything except AIAA, NASA, NACA, AGARD, and NATO." Months are the one permitted exception: you may abbreviate them, so "Nov. 2016" is correct. In a submitted manuscript, the reference list is double-spaced.

The full-title rule is where AIAA differs most from its neighbors. IEEE and ACS both abbreviate journal names; AIAA writes Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets in full. If you are moving a reference list over from an IEEE paper, the journal names are the first thing to expand.

AIAA in-text citations

Each citation in the text is a number in square brackets. AIAA's own examples show every form you are likely to need:

It is shown by Smith [4] that … The effect of … should be taken into account [5]. For example, see Refs. [6, 7]. Further documentation can be found in [8-10].

The bracket sits inside the sentence, before the period. When the number is the grammatical object of the sentence, AIAA writes "Refs." or "Ref." in front of it ("see Refs. [6, 7]"). When you name the author, the bracketed number follows the name ("Smith [4]"). Use a comma between separate numbers and a hyphen for a continuous range of three or more.

Page numbers are rare in AIAA papers, because engineering writing quotes less than the humanities do. When you need one, it goes inside the brackets:

This procedure was proposed by Gelb [11, p. 250] The solution can be found in Rogers [12, pp. 14-18].

For author names in the running text, AIAA names up to two authors ("Walsh and Jones [3]") and switches to "et al." at three or more ("Walsh et al. [3]"). That "et al." is for the sentence only. The reference list entry under [3] still names every author.

Superscript numbers are a common mistake here. Some older handouts and generator descriptions call AIAA a superscript style. The current AIAA page, which sets the rules for AIAA journals, uses square brackets on the line of text.

AIAA reference format by source type

The reference list is headed "References" and runs in numerical order. Each entry starts with its bracketed number. Authors are listed surname first, then initials, separated by commas, with ", and" before the last name. Because every name ends in a comma after the initials, the comma before "and" appears even with two authors. Article and chapter titles go in quotation marks in title case, with the comma inside the closing quotation mark. Journal titles, book titles, and proceedings titles are italic; the code blocks below cannot show italics, so each example says which element is italic.

1. Journal article

[2] Johnson, J. E., Lewis, M. J., and Starkey, R. P., "Multi-Objective Optimization of Earth-Entry Vehicle Heat Shields," Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets, Vol. 49, No. 1, 2012, pp. 38–50. https://doi.org/xx.xxxx/x.xxxxx

The pattern is: authors, "Article Title," Journal Title, Vol. number, No. number, year, pp. range, then the DOI. Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets is italic. AIAA notes that a month is acceptable when the journal has no issue number.

The DOI is written as a full URL beginning https://doi.org/. AIAA asks for it on "every reference for which it is available" and calls the doi.org link the preferred one. That matches the Crossref display guidelines, which say a DOI should always be displayed as a full link in the form https://doi.org/10.xxxx/xxxxx, without a "doi:" prefix and without "dx" in the domain. The xx.xxxx in AIAA's example is their placeholder; copy the real DOI from the article page. In AIAA's own examples the link sits on a new line under the reference.

2. Journal article published online first

Articles often appear online weeks or months before they get a volume and issue. AIAA's format replaces the volume, issue, and pages with the online date:

[3] Alyanak, E. J., and Pendleton, E., "Aeroelastic Tailoring and Active Aeroelastic Wing Impact on a Lambda Wing Configuration," Journal of Aircraft, published online 10 Nov. 2016. https://doi.org/xx.xxxx/x.xxxxx

Journal of Aircraft is italic. This is the one place AIAA keeps a day in the date, because the online date is the only date the article has. Once the article lands in an issue, update the reference to the full volume, number, and page format.

3. Chapter in a book

[1] Turner, M. J., Martin, H. C., and Leible, R. C., "Further Development and Applications of Stiffness Method," Matrix Methods of Structural Analysis, 1st ed., Vol. 1, Wiley, New York, 1963, pp. 6–10.

Matrix Methods of Structural Analysis is italic. The order runs chapter authors, "Chapter Title," Book Title, edition, volume, publisher, city, year, pages. Note that the publisher comes before the city, which is the reverse of the "City: Publisher" order in Chicago and older APA.

AIAA's page has no example of a whole book. Following the chapter pattern with the chapter title removed gives the defensible form, and it is what AllCitations outputs:

[5] Author, A. A., Book Title, 2nd ed., Publisher, City, Year.

4. Chapter in an edited AIAA book series

AIAA publishes its own book series, Progress in Astronautics and Aeronautics, and its example shows how to handle an editor and a series:

[15] Sutton, K., "Air Radiation Revisited," Thermal Design of Aeroassisted Orbital Transfer Vehicles, edited by H. F. Nelson, Vol. 96, Progress in Astronautics and Aeronautics, AIAA, New York, 1985, pp. 419–441.

Thermal Design of Aeroassisted Orbital Transfer Vehicles is italic. The editor is introduced with "edited by" and written initials first, which is the only place in an AIAA reference where a name is not inverted. The series name follows the volume number.

5. Meeting paper (AIAA conference paper)

Papers presented at AIAA forums such as SciTech and AVIATION carry an AIAA paper number, and that number is the core of the reference:

[13] Neifeld, A., and Ewert, R., "Jet Mixing Noise from Single Stream Jets using Stochastic Source Modeling," AIAA Paper 2011-2700, June 2011. https://doi.org/xx.xxxx/x.xxxxx

A paper from another society's meeting follows the same pattern, with the society spelled out:

[14] Hobbs, D. E., "Experimental Investigation of Compressor Cascade Wakes," American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Paper 82-GT-299, April 1982.

AIAA adds a rule students often miss: "Update meeting paper references if they have been published in a journal." The page goes further and recommends citing the journal version over its conference counterpart where one exists, because the journal version has been through peer review. If you cite a 2011 conference paper that became a 2013 journal article, cite the article. For the IEEE version of this source type, see the IEEE conference paper guide.

6. Paper in published proceedings

When conference papers are collected in a bound volume, treat the proceedings like a book:

[7] Wirin, W. B., "Space Debris 1989," Proceedings of the Thirty-Second Colloquium on the Law of Outer Space, AIAA, Washington, DC, 1990, pp. 184–196.

Proceedings of the Thirty-Second Colloquium on the Law of Outer Space is italic. "Complete publishing information for proceedings (i.e., the same as for other books)" is on AIAA's list of commonly missing details, so the publisher, city, year, and page range all belong here.

7. NASA or company technical report

Technical reports are the source type that most separates aerospace writing from other fields. The report number does the work a journal volume does elsewhere:

[12] Miner, E. W., and Lewis, C. H., "Hypersonic Ionizing Air Viscous Shock-Layer Flows over Nonanalytic Blunt Bodies," NASA CR-2550, May 1975.

For a company report, add the company, the report number, and the company's location:

[11] Bhutta, B. A., and Lewis, C. H., "PNS Predictions of External/Internal Hypersonic Flows for NASP Propulsion Applications," VRA, Inc., VRA-TR-90-01, Blacksburg, VA, June 1990.

The report title goes in quotation marks, not italics. NASA keeps its abbreviation, along with the report series code (CR, SP, TM, and so on), because NASA is on AIAA's short list of names you never spell out.

8. Thesis or dissertation

AIAA files its dissertation example under electronic databases, because the copy most readers reach is in one:

[16] Tseng, K., "Nonlinear Green's Function Method for Transonic Potential Flow," Ph.D. Dissertation, Aeronautics and Astronautics Dept., Boston Univ., Boston, MA, 1983, ProQuest Ebrary.

The pattern is author, "Title," degree, department, university, city and state, year, and the database. AIAA gives no master's thesis example; writing "M.S. Thesis" in place of "Ph.D. Dissertation" keeps the same pattern. AIAA's example abbreviates "Dept." and "Univ." even though the general rule says to spell everything out. Either form is defensible; choose one and use it for every thesis in the list.

9. Magazine or trade periodical

Trade publications such as Aerospace America and Aviation Week follow the periodical pattern AIAA gives: author(s), "title," journal title, volume, issue, date, pages.

[9] Terster, W., "NASA Considers Switch to Delta 2," Space News, Vol. 8, No. 2, Jan. 1997, pp. 1, 18. [10] Dornheim, M. A., "Planetary Flight Surge Faces Budget Realities," Aviation Week and Space Technology, Vol. 145, No. 24, Dec. 1996, pp. 44–46.

AIAA's instruction for these is specific: "Don't add the days in the date." A weekly magazine dated 9 Dec. 1996 is cited as Dec. 1996. The "pp. 1, 18" in the Space News example shows how to cite an article that starts on one page and continues on a later, non-adjacent page.

Special cases

The 18 examples cover a lot, but every reference list hits something they do not. Here is how to handle the common gaps, with the reasoning for each.

No author

AIAA's anonymous report example starts with the title:

[18] "Equations, Tables, and Charts for Compressible Flow," NACA Rept. 1135, 1953.

There is no "Anonymous" and no organization moved into the author slot. AIAA's note on this example says to include the month if it is available. AIAA's page does not address organizational authors. When a standards body or agency clearly wrote the work, putting the organization in the author position is a defensible choice; keep it consistent across the list.

Article accepted but not yet published

[5] Devasia, S., and Lee, A., "Scalable Low-Cost Unmanned-Aerial-Vehicle Traffic Network," Journal of Air Transportation (not yet published).

Journal of Air Transportation is italic. AIAA expects you to "update the publication status of unpublished works at the author proof stage," so this entry is temporary in a journal submission. In a course paper, check the journal's site before you submit; the article may have been published since you first cited it.

Online source with no DOI

AIAA's example of a journal with a direct URL and no DOI puts the URL on its own line after the reference:

[4] von Hippel, T., "Contribution of White Dwarfs to Cluster Masses," Astronomical Journal, Vol. 114, No. 4, 1998, pp. 1536–1542. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/AJ/journal/contents/v115n4.html

For an online source that carries no date, add a retrieval date. AIAA's database example shows the form, "retrieved 15 March 1998," placed after the source name:

[17] Vickers, A., "10–110 mm/hr Hypodermic Gravity Design A," Rainfall Simulation Database, retrieved 15 March 1998. http://www.geog.le.ac.uk/bgrg/lab.htm

Websites, datasets, and software

AIAA has no website example, and that is deliberate. The page limits the reference list to material with a commitment to archiving, and sends personal websites and unarchived pages to the text or a footnote. So the first question for a web source is whether it belongs in the list at all. An agency page, a maintained database, or a versioned software release with a DOI qualifies. A blog post or a project wiki usually does not.

For a web source that does qualify, the database example is the closest official pattern: author or organization, "Title," site or database name, the date or a retrieval date, and the URL on the next line. That is an inference from AIAA's examples rather than a published rule, so if your instructor or the journal gives a website format, theirs wins.

Names with particles

AIAA's von Hippel example keeps the lowercase "von" in front of the surname: "von Hippel, T." Write the name the way the author does, and keep the particle attached to the surname.

Secondary sources

AIAA has no "as cited in" form. Its rule is to cite the original source. If you genuinely cannot get the original (an out-of-print company report, say), cite only the work you actually read, and mention the original in your own sentence: "Bhutta and Lewis's 1990 results, as summarized by Smith [7], show …".

Using an AIAA citation generator

A generator saves you the punctuation, which is most of the work in AIAA style. It does not decide what belongs in the list, and it cannot see what you have cited earlier in your paper. Here is what the AllCitations generator does with AIAA and what you still check yourself.

The AllCitations AIAA generator uses the "American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics" CSL style. That style brackets the citation number, lists every author in the reference with no "et al." cutoff, writes journal titles in full and in italics, puts article titles in quotation marks in title case, and writes a DOI as a https://doi.org/ link. It is free and needs no account. Search by DOI and it fills the fields from the registered metadata.

Five things to check in any generator's AIAA output, ours included:

1. The number. A generator formats one reference at a time, so every entry comes out as [1]. Renumber the list by order of first citation in your text, and make sure each in-text number matches the reference with that number. This is the step most likely to go wrong in a long report.
2. Report numbers and paper numbers. Database metadata often drops "AIAA Paper 2011-2700" or "NASA CR-2550" into a notes field, or leaves it out. Those numbers are how a reader finds a technical report. Add them by hand if they are missing.
3. Journal versions. If the generator finds a conference paper, search for a later journal version before you keep it. AIAA prefers the journal article.
4. Dates on periodicals. Metadata often carries a full day. For a magazine or trade periodical, AIAA wants the month and year only.
5. Capitalization of titles. Automatic title casing works from the metadata, and metadata sometimes stores acronyms or chemical formulas in the wrong case. Compare each title against the article page and fix anything the conversion changed.

The generator handles the parts that are mechanical and easy to get slightly wrong: the comma before "and," the comma inside the closing quotation mark, "Vol." and "No." in the right places. The judgment calls, such as whether a web page belongs in the reference list or which version of a paper to cite, stay with you.

AIAA in LaTeX and BibTeX

Many aerospace students write in LaTeX, and AIAA style has a long-standing LaTeX bundle. The aiaa package on CTAN, version 3.6, maintained by Bil Kleb, is described as "a bundle of LaTeX/BibTeX files and sample documents to aid those producing papers and journal articles." If you are submitting to an AIAA journal or conference, use the current template linked from AIAA's author pages, since the CTAN bundle is a community package.

Whatever template you use, a BibTeX style only formats the fields you give it. The checks above still apply. Three BibTeX fields cause most AIAA problems:

• Report numbers. A @techreport entry has number and institution fields. If the report number is missing from the .bib entry, it is missing from the reference.
• Capital letters in titles. BibTeX styles may change the case of a title. Wrap acronyms and proper nouns in braces ({NASA}, {Mach}) so they survive.
• Journal abbreviations. If your .bib file came from a database export that abbreviates journal names, expand them. AIAA wants the full title.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

• Superscript numbers. Older handouts describe AIAA as a superscript style. Use square brackets on the line, as AIAA's page and journals do.
• Numbering alphabetically. AIAA numbers in order of first citation. An alphabetical list is APA or Harvard thinking carried over; the APA reference list order rules do not apply here.
• "Et al." in the reference list. "Et al." is allowed in your sentence for three or more authors. The reference names everyone.
• Abbreviated journal names. IEEE and ACS abbreviate. AIAA spells out Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics in full, along with everything else except AIAA, NASA, NACA, AGARD, and NATO.
• City before publisher. AIAA's order is "Wiley, New York, 1963." Chicago's "New York: Wiley, 1963" is a different style.
• Citing the conference paper when a journal version exists. AIAA recommends the journal version and asks you to update meeting paper references once they are published.
• Putting a personal website in the list. It goes in the text or a footnote.
• A DOI written as "doi: 10…" or with dx.doi.org. Write the full https://doi.org/ link.
• Day in a periodical date. "9 Dec. 1996" becomes "Dec. 1996." The exception is the online-first date of a journal article.

Quick-reference table