This is the development version of the Kepler/K2 science website. For the live website, visit keplerscience.arc.nasa.gov

Publications

We request that scientific publications using data obtained from the Kepler or K2 projects include one of the following acknowledgments:

This paper includes data collected by the Kepler mission. Funding for the Kepler mission is provided by the NASA Science Mission directorate.

This paper includes data collected by the K2 mission. Funding for the K2 mission is provided by the NASA Science Mission directorate.

Publication database

The Guest Observer office curates a list of scientific publications pertaining to Kepler and K2. The database contains 3290 publications, of which 2948 are peer-reviewed. It demonstrates the important impact of Kepler/K2 data on astronomical research.

You can access the publication list by mission:

Or by topic:

You also can mine the database yourself by accessing a spreadsheet of the publications: kepler-publications.xls

If you spot an error, such as a missing entry, please get in touch or open an issue in the GitHub repository of the database.

Last update: 13 Aug 2019.

Breakdown by year & mission

The graph below shows the number of publications as a function of year and mission. The publication count for Kepler is 2687 while that of K2 is 603. The number of refereed papers is 2412 for Kepler and 536 for K2.

Publication rate by mission and year

Number of authors

The entries in the publication database have been authored and co-authored by a total of 5481 unique author names. We define the author name at "last name, first initial". Slight variations in the spelling may increase the number of unique names, while common names with the same first initial may result in undercounting.

Number of Kepler and K2 papers and unique authors over time

Breakdown by subject

Both Kepler and K2 data have been used for scientific applications that reach far beyond exoplanet research. While 1547 works relate to exoplanets (47%), a total of 1743 pertain to other areas of astrophysics (53%).

The graph below details the breakdown of K2 papers by science topic.

Publications by subject

Most-cited publications

Kepler/K2 publications have cumulatively been cited 99783 times. The list below shows the most-cited publications, based on the citation count obtained from NASA ADS.

  1. KEPLER PLANET-DETECTION MISSION: INTRODUCTION AND FIRST RESULTS
    Borucki, William J., Koch, David, Basri, Gibor, et al.
    2010Sci...327..977B 1677 citations

  2. MODULES FOR EXPERIMENTS IN STELLAR ASTROPHYSICS (MESA): PLANETS, OSCILLATIONS, ROTATION, AND MASSIVE STARS
    Paxton, Bill, Cantiello, Matteo, Arras, Phil, et al.
    2013ApJS..208....4P 900 citations

  3. PLANETARY CANDIDATES OBSERVED BY KEPLER. III. ANALYSIS OF THE FIRST 16 MONTHS OF DATA
    Batalha, Natalie M., Rowe, Jason F., Bryson, Stephen T., et al.
    2013ApJS..204...24B 745 citations

  4. THE K2 MISSION: CHARACTERIZATION AND EARLY RESULTS
    Howell, Steve B., Sobeck, Charlie, Haas, Michael, et al.
    2014PASP..126..398H 722 citations

  5. CHARACTERISTICS OF PLANETARY CANDIDATES OBSERVED BY KEPLER. II. ANALYSIS OF THE FIRST FOUR MONTHS OF DATA
    Borucki, William J., Koch, David G., Basri, Gibor, et al.
    2011ApJ...736...19B 713 citations

  6. KEPLER MISSION DESIGN, REALIZED PHOTOMETRIC PERFORMANCE, AND EARLY SCIENCE
    Koch, David G., Borucki, William J., Basri, Gibor, et al.
    2010ApJ...713L..79K 700 citations

  7. PLANET OCCURRENCE WITHIN 0.25 AU OF SOLAR-TYPE STARS FROM KEPLER
    Howard, Andrew W., Marcy, Geoffrey W., Bryson, Stephen T., et al.
    2012ApJS..201...15H 634 citations

  8. THE FALSE POSITIVE RATE OF KEPLER AND THE OCCURRENCE OF PLANETS
    Fressin, François, Torres, Guillermo, Charbonneau, David, et al.
    2013ApJ...766...81F 599 citations

  9. KEPLER INPUT CATALOG: PHOTOMETRIC CALIBRATION AND STELLAR CLASSIFICATION
    Brown, Timothy M., Latham, David W., Everett, Mark E., et al.
    2011AJ....142..112B 590 citations

  10. GRAVITY AND LIMB-DARKENING COEFFICIENTS FOR THE KEPLER, COROT, SPITZER, UVBY, UBVRIJHK, AND SLOAN PHOTOMETRIC SYSTEMS
    Claret, A., Bloemen, S.
    2011A&A...529A..75C 582 citations

  11. HABITABLE ZONES AROUND MAIN-SEQUENCE STARS: NEW ESTIMATES
    Kopparapu, Ravi Kumar, Ramirez, Ramses, Kasting, James F., et al.
    2013ApJ...765..131K 565 citations

  12. A CLOSELY PACKED SYSTEM OF LOW-MASS, LOW-DENSITY PLANETS TRANSITING KEPLER-11
    Lissauer, Jack J., Fabrycky, Daniel C., Ford, Eric B., et al.
    2011Natur.470...53L 452 citations

  13. ARCHITECTURE AND DYNAMICS OF KEPLER'S CANDIDATE MULTIPLE TRANSITING PLANET SYSTEMS
    Lissauer, Jack J., Ragozzine, Darin, Fabrycky, Daniel C., et al.
    2011ApJS..197....8L 425 citations

  14. KEPLER-16: A TRANSITING CIRCUMBINARY PLANET
    Doyle, Laurance R., Carter, Joshua A., Fabrycky, Daniel C., et al.
    2011Sci...333.1602D 422 citations

  15. THE OCCURRENCE RATE OF SMALL PLANETS AROUND SMALL STARS
    Dressing, Courtney D., Charbonneau, David
    2013ApJ...767...95D 412 citations

  16. OVERVIEW OF THE KEPLER SCIENCE PROCESSING PIPELINE
    Jenkins, Jon M., Caldwell, Douglas A., Chandrasekaran, Hema, et al.
    2010ApJ...713L..87J 374 citations

  17. AN ABUNDANCE OF SMALL EXOPLANETS AROUND STARS WITH A WIDE RANGE OF METALLICITIES
    Buchhave, Lars A., Latham, David W., Johansen, Anders, et al.
    2012Natur.486..375B 372 citations

  18. KEPLER'S FIRST ROCKY PLANET: KEPLER-10B
    Batalha, Natalie M., Borucki, William J., Bryson, Stephen T., et al.
    2011ApJ...729...27B 365 citations

  19. ARCHITECTURE OF KEPLER'S MULTI-TRANSITING SYSTEMS. II. NEW INVESTIGATIONS WITH TWICE AS MANY CANDIDATES
    Fabrycky, Daniel C., Lissauer, Jack J., Ragozzine, Darin, et al.
    2014ApJ...790..146F 362 citations

  20. GRAVITY MODES AS A WAY TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN HYDROGEN- AND HELIUM-BURNING RED GIANT STARS
    Bedding, Timothy R., Mosser, Benoit, Huber, Daniel, et al.
    2011Natur.471..608B 361 citations

Most-active authors

Below we list the most-active authors, defined as those with six or more first-author publications in our database.

  • Balona, L (36 publications)

  • Kipping, D (23 publications)

  • Savanov, I (20 publications)

  • Kjurkchieva, D (15 publications)

  • Kane, S (15 publications)

  • Jenkins, J (15 publications)

  • Borucki, W (14 publications)

  • Rappaport, S (14 publications)

  • Murphy, S (14 publications)

  • Scaringi, S (13 publications)

  • Steffen, J (13 publications)

  • Baran, A (13 publications)

  • Beck, P (12 publications)

  • Armstrong, D (12 publications)

  • Stello, D (12 publications)

  • Huber, D (12 publications)

  • Heller, R (12 publications)

  • Corsaro, E (11 publications)

  • Vanderburg, A (11 publications)

  • Mosser, B (11 publications)

  • Hekker, S (11 publications)

  • Gaidos, E (11 publications)

  • Zhu, W (10 publications)

  • David, T (10 publications)

  • Hippke, M (10 publications)

  • Mathur, S (10 publications)

  • Lee, J (10 publications)

  • Van Eylen, V (10 publications)

  • Molnar, L (10 publications)

  • Petigura, E (10 publications)

  • Wang, J (10 publications)

  • Hermes, J (9 publications)

  • Lund, M (9 publications)

  • Mann, A (9 publications)

  • Molenda-Zakowicz, J (9 publications)

  • Metcalfe, T (9 publications)

  • Chaplin, W (9 publications)

  • Campante, T (9 publications)

  • Silva Aguirre, V (9 publications)

  • Plachy, E (9 publications)

  • Dressing, C (9 publications)

  • Santerne, A (9 publications)

  • Ramsay, G (9 publications)

  • Masuda, K (8 publications)

  • Karoff, C (8 publications)

  • Sanchis-Ojeda, R (8 publications)

  • Guzik, J (8 publications)

  • Lillo-Box, J (8 publications)

  • Ostensen, R (8 publications)

  • Kallinger, T (8 publications)

  • Davenport, J (8 publications)

  • Reed, M (8 publications)

  • Christiansen, J (8 publications)

  • Morris, B (8 publications)

  • Kato, T (8 publications)

  • Hirano, T (8 publications)

  • Buldgen, G (7 publications)

  • Wang, S (7 publications)

  • Howell, S (7 publications)

  • Dawson, R (7 publications)

  • Shporer, A (7 publications)

  • Mocnik, T (7 publications)

  • Borkovits, T (7 publications)

  • Salabert, D (7 publications)

  • Barclay, T (7 publications)

  • Dong, Y (7 publications)

  • Nielsen, M (7 publications)

  • Katsova, M (7 publications)

  • Zeng, L (7 publications)

  • Tkachenko, A (7 publications)

  • Montet, B (7 publications)

  • Almenara, J (7 publications)

  • Gilliland, R (7 publications)

  • Martin, D (7 publications)

  • Lissauer, J (7 publications)

  • Lopez, E (6 publications)

  • Reinhold, T (6 publications)

  • Colon, K (6 publications)

  • Koch, D (6 publications)

  • Szabo, R (6 publications)

  • Faigler, S (6 publications)

  • Bellinger, E (6 publications)

  • Benko, J (6 publications)

  • Garcia, R (6 publications)

  • White, T (6 publications)

  • Bonomo, A (6 publications)

  • Fuller, J (6 publications)

  • Dai, F (6 publications)

  • Owen, J (6 publications)

  • Jeffery, C (6 publications)

  • Basri, G (6 publications)

  • Arkhypov, O (6 publications)

  • Benomar, O (6 publications)

  • Ulusoy, C (6 publications)

  • Muirhead, P (6 publications)

  • Ziegler, C (6 publications)

  • Demory, B (6 publications)

  • Notsu, Y (6 publications)

  • Torres, G (6 publications)

  • Deheuvels, S (6 publications)

  • Carter, J (6 publications)

  • Papics, P (6 publications)

  • Johnson, J (6 publications)

  • Gizis, J (6 publications)

  • Morton, T (6 publications)

  • Chatterjee, S (6 publications)

  • Batalha, N (6 publications)

  • Bowman, D (6 publications)

  • Miglio, A (6 publications)