[BUG] Bad spacing in author-year inline text when no first name (i.e., organizational author; collaborations)

[timj]

Describe the bug

We have references where there is no first name, just a collaboration name. Now that in AASTeX7 the initials are included in the inline author-year text you end up with an extra space in the text.

For example a normal entry looks like:

but a badly formatted one looks like:

You can see the problem in the bbl file:

% type= misc
\bibitem[{ {NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory}(2025{\natexlab{d}}){NSF-DOE Vera
  C. Rubin Observatory}}]{10.71929/rubin/2570314}
{NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory}. 2025{\natexlab{d}}, {Legacy Survey of
  Space and Time Data Preview 1: template\_coadd dataset type [Data set]},
  NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory, \dodoi{10.71929/RUBIN/2570314}

from a bib entry such as:

@misc{10.71929/rubin/2570314,
    author = "{NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory}",
    doi = "10.71929/RUBIN/2570314",
    url = "https://www.osti.gov//servlets/purl/2570314",
    keywords = "79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS",
    title = "{Legacy Survey of Space and Time Data Preview 1: template\_coadd dataset type [Data set]}",
    publisher = "NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory",
    year = "2025"
}

Expected behavior

No leading space in the text.

LaTeX configuration (please complete the following information):

• aastex7 2025/02/06 Version 7/AAS markup document class
• macOS 15.5
• XeTeX 3.141592653-2.6-0.999996 (TeX Live 2024)
  *aasjournalv7.bst March 4, 2025

[augustfly]

I'll second this as I also reported it to @gregschwarz. The workaround (but it's not an actual solution) is to hand-edit the .bbl file. Which is what I did so the Research Note PDF I was working on looked OK in the end.

[jzuhone]

getting bit by this also--is there a known solution yet?

[gregschwarz]

Unfortunately not. We have not started work on AASTeX v7.0.2 which is when this will be addressed. The only workaround is Gus's above, i.e. edit the resulting .bbl file to remove the leading space.

[gregschwarz]

Bryan Gaensler reports that Ayush Pandhi has identified a fix for this:

1. Add this function to the bst file:

FUNCTION {add.space.if.nonempty}
{ duplicate$ empty$
    { pop$ "" }      % if top-of-stack is empty, push empty (no space)
    { " " * }        % else append a space
  if$
}

2. Replace the two instances of this line:

s labnameptr forname.format.string format.name$ add.blank%first.initial

with

s labnameptr forname.format.string format.name$ add.space.if.nonempty

Users are welcome to try this on their own copies of the latest .bst file but please note that this solution has not been tested and may result in unexpected results.

[m-schochet]

Hello! Wanted to jump in here and provide some additional information to the comment from @gregschwarz above.

I've been dealing with this bug for a few months now (specifically "x Collaboration" [Gaia/Lightkurve/Astropy] authors which are included in ADS Bibtex as one name), and the two edits suggested above do indeed fix this error in all locations of my draft (around 15 individual locations scattered throughout).

These edits also do not cause any additional LaTex errors upon compilation (the draft had 13 both before and after adding in the lines, and none of those errors were any different due to making the edits). Hoping to see this feature added soon!

[confluence]

I reported this over email today, and was directed to this repo. FYI, my solution was to edit the .bst file to revert the format.lab.names function to its previous version, and to reapply the change (adding initials to author names, as far as I can tell) in the built-in (?) way with {f.~}, which adds the space conditionally if the element exists:

FUNCTION {format.lab.names}
{ 's :=
  s #1 "{f.~}{vv~}{ll}" format.name$
  s num.names$ duplicate$
  #2 >
    { pop$
      " {et~al.}" *
    }
    { #2 <
        'skip$
        { s #2 "{ff }{vv }{ll}{ jj}" format.name$ "others" =
            {
              " {et~al.}" *
            }
            { " \& " * s #2 "{f.~}{vv~}{ll}" format.name$
              * }
          if$
        }
      if$
    }
  if$
}

I believe that everything else between the chop.word and author.key.label functions is a dependency of the new function and can be removed if you use this workaround.

I'm not sure what the intention of the change was; comments suggest that it's supposed to add the first initial only, but in my document it adds all the initials. So this workaround doesn't appear to change the behaviour (except that it fixes the bug).

[confluence]

Followup: I didn't previously realise this because I'm not familiar with the .bst syntax, but there's a first.initial function which is defined but not actually used (it's commented out and replaced with add.blank in the format.lab.names function). If you actually use this function (instead of add.blank), you fix the bug and get the first initial only in the citation labels. The question is which behaviour (all initials or single initial) is intended. The reference instructions show multiple initials in all the examples -- was this a proposed change which was reversed? Should it be optional, and conditional on a variable in the stylesheet? The changes to the format.lab.names function structure make more sense if they were introduced to make the single initial possible.

If you do want first initials only, you can modify the function in the original v7 stylesheet like this:

FUNCTION {format.lab.names}
{ 's :=
  #1 'labnameptr :=
  s labnameptr forname.format.string format.name$ first.initial 
  s labnameptr surname.format.string format.name$  *   
  s num.names$ duplicate$
  #2 >
    { pop$
      " {et~al.}" *
    }
    { #2 <
        'skip$
        { s #2 "{ff }{vv }{ll}{ jj}" format.name$ "others" =
            {
              " {et~al.}" *
            }
            { " \& " * 
	      #2 'labnameptr :=
	      s labnameptr forname.format.string format.name$ first.initial  
	      s labnameptr surname.format.string format.name$  *  
              * }
          if$
        }
      if$
    }
  if$
}