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Crelle's Journal is a nickname of a Mathematics Journal, and it's full name is "Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik". It's commonly called Crelle since it is founded in 1826 by August Leopold Crelle.

Now I want to cite a paper in Crelle, but I realize that in the official page they also include (Crelle Journal) in the citation information, for an example see here. On the other hand, some mathematicians once told me that it is "pretty weird" to see the nickname being used.

So my question is, is it common to include (Crelle) in the citation? Or, how official is the name Crelle's journal?

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    In actual fact they include "Crelles Journal" (with an "s" yet no apostrophe) as it's the German genitive.
    – quid
    Sep 25, 2016 at 23:29
  • I think it's not much different from saying "Abramowitz & Stegun, p. 355" or "OEIS A001203" or indeed "arXiv:hep-th/9802150" or "PRL 59, 2044" if this journal is equally thoroughly familiar in your field. Not perfect but immediately understood, and the journal editors can always substitute the proper citation in preparation for publication if that's their policy.
    – The Vee
    Sep 26, 2016 at 10:25
  • No one uses Borchardt's journal anymore either, but both this name and the name Crelle's Journal were used in the 1800s, and thus something anyone pursuing old literature would find very useful to know. But no one would now use either of these names, outside of historical discussions, and similarly no one would now use Liouville's Journal for "Journal de Mathématiques Pures et Appliquées".
    – Dave L Renfro
    Sep 26, 2016 at 15:14
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    @DaveLRenfro "But no one would now use either of these names, outside of historical discussions" That's just false. Plenty of people use Crelle's Journal to refer to this journal in informal contexts. Also Liouville's journal is sometimes used.
    – quid
    Sep 26, 2016 at 16:35
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    @DaveLRenfro I think a reason why it is somewhat common is that to say the actual name of the journal is quite a mouth-full and to type it correctly maybe is not obvious either. If you search arXiv for Crelle as I propose in my answer, you'll find about a dozen usages of "to appear in Crelle" or "submitted to Crelle" etc. That it is really used in a bibliography is more rare, but there are a couple instances of "recent to recent" (I did not check if it survived copy-editing for the published version). The parenthetical usage is still pretty common.
    – quid
    Sep 26, 2016 at 19:00

5 Answers 5

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I usually see "J. Reine Angew. Math." without "Crelle".

MathSciNet has citation information in the form of BibTeX entries; for references indexed there, I recommend going with that. (Indeed if you use BibTeX you can just download the bibliographic information without writing it out again.)

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I agree with Anonymous. I think you are misreading the website. They are not telling you say "Crelle's journal" when you cite. If you click the cite link on the journal homepage, they give you something like this (for APA format):

Journal für die reine und angewandte Mathematik. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. Retrieved 26 Sep. 2016, from http://www.degruyter.com/view/j/crll

without the nickname.

That said, it's pretty weird that the cite options you get are APA, MLA and Chicago as none of them are ever used in math. It's already pretty weird to use the full journal name, rather than the standard abbreviation. I usually use MathSciNet to make my bibliographies, as Anonymous recommends.

Note: I have seen people include (Crelle's Journal) in citations on their CV or website, which is okay though perhaps not common, but I wouldn't do it for a bibliography (edit: not to say it doesn't happen, as other answers point out).

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  • I actually had one math professor who insisted on APA as it was department standard (being part of the general Science department of a small school); so to say none of them are ever used in math may be too strong a statement.
    – Weckar E.
    Sep 26, 2016 at 7:26
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    @WeckarE. How can a professor insist on a citation standard when which standard to use is determined by the journal you submit to (meaning that you should completely ignore all issues of style as the journal will handle that)?
    – Tobias Kildetoft
    Sep 26, 2016 at 9:02
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    @TobiasKildetoft I'd assume that the professor insisted that students follow this standard for their theses and other documents they write as part of their studies, where the guidelines of the department apply. (As opposed to the professor insisting on using this style for their or their students to be published articles).
    – quid
    Sep 26, 2016 at 16:25
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For citing most any mathematics journal there is an easy way to get what the common way to cite it is: look up the (short) title in MathSciNet or zbMATH, the latter allows limited access without subscription (almost always they use the same).

If you want to be on the safe side use whatever is given there as (short) title. For the current case this is "J. Reine Angew. Math."

It is true that for this journal specifically mention of its founder's name Crelle is somewhat common, so if you want to you might include it. It is sufficiently official as for zbMATH mentioning "Crelle's Journal" as parallel title.

A reason for doing this could be that some might recognize it more directly than under its real name, but this is (if at all) relevant for a CV more than for a bibliography.

I'd say if you really want to you could use Crelle's Journal as the journal name. It might get changed in copy-editing though. But if you are not convinced it is a good idea just don't. No one should find it strange if you do not use it.

To get a feeling how common it is to use it nowadays one can search for example arXiv with fulltext search. One gets around 250 hits for Crelle. Mostly they mean the journal. A cursory look shows that:

  • the format to include Crelle's journal or Crelle in parenthesis to complement J. Reine Angew. Math. or something similar is no uncommon (as mentioned by Andreas Blass).

  • to use only Crelle's journal is rare but nevertheless is still done sometimes.

In this process I noted that the DOIs of the journal contain the string "crelle."

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  • the format to include Crelle's journal... is no uncommon [sic] - Really to see if it's uncommon, you should compare against counts of the abbreviated and full journal name. Though I agree it's happens a fair amount on the arXiv (more than I expected, maybe 1/4 - 1/3 of the time?), but I guess it may be less in published journals.
    – Kimball
    Sep 26, 2016 at 19:02
  • When it happens in 150+ papers and knowing a ballpark estimate how often it could happen at all, it's clear it's not something very unusual. But, yes, one could make more precise how common it is in a relative sense. So searches for "reine angew." and "reine und angewandte" summed together are about 600. This should cover a fare share of all, and includes the maybe around close to 200 instances with Crelle. So yes seems like around 30%, which is quite a bit higher than my threshold for not uncommon. What is in published journals is not that relevant since it's more about what authors do.
    – quid
    Sep 26, 2016 at 19:22
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    I agree with you (+1), the arxiv data indicates it's relatively common for authors to do this. I was just thinking that the reason I never noticed it to be this common (and why one person told the OP it's "pretty weird") could be because (i) it happens less in published articles so I see it less often, or (ii) I just didn't pay that much attention. (Another reason it could be "pretty weird" is because people don't do this for most other journals.)
    – Kimball
    Sep 26, 2016 at 20:35
  • Yes, it'd be interesting to compare. Next time I have access to a bib database and some time to spare I'll check for the published data. I agree to assuming there'll be some decline.
    – quid
    Sep 26, 2016 at 22:32
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I don't recall ever seeing "Crelles Journal" by itself as the title (in modern bibliographies), but I often see it in parentheses after "J. Reine Angew. Math."

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AMS Abbreviations of Names of Serials says:

J. Reine Angew. Math. Journal für die Reine und Angewandte Mathematik. [Crelle’s Journal]. De Gruyter, Berlin. ISSN 0075-4102.

If the historical note is very important for you,

J. Reine Angew. Math. (Crelle’s Journal)

could work, but editors may ask you to remove it.

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