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 3480 publications, of which 3136 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: 05 Feb 2020.

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 2814 while that of K2 is 666. The number of refereed papers is 2539 for Kepler and 597 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 5710 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 1630 works relate to exoplanets (47%), a total of 1850 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 110262 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 1790 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 1023 citations

  3. THE K2 MISSION: CHARACTERIZATION AND EARLY RESULTS
    Howell, Steve B., Sobeck, Charlie, Haas, Michael, et al.
    2014PASP..126..398H 792 citations

  4. 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 772 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 734 citations

  6. KEPLER MISSION DESIGN, REALIZED PHOTOMETRIC PERFORMANCE, AND EARLY SCIENCE
    Koch, David G., Borucki, William J., Basri, Gibor, et al.
    2010ApJ...713L..79K 733 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 661 citations

  8. THE FALSE POSITIVE RATE OF KEPLER AND THE OCCURRENCE OF PLANETS
    Fressin, François, Torres, Guillermo, Charbonneau, David, et al.
    2013ApJ...766...81F 638 citations

  9. HABITABLE ZONES AROUND MAIN-SEQUENCE STARS: NEW ESTIMATES
    Kopparapu, Ravi Kumar, Ramirez, Ramses, Kasting, James F., et al.
    2013ApJ...765..131K 620 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 614 citations

  11. KEPLER INPUT CATALOG: PHOTOMETRIC CALIBRATION AND STELLAR CLASSIFICATION
    Brown, Timothy M., Latham, David W., Everett, Mark E., et al.
    2011AJ....142..112B 610 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 464 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 442 citations

  14. KEPLER-16: A TRANSITING CIRCUMBINARY PLANET
    Doyle, Laurance R., Carter, Joshua A., Fabrycky, Daniel C., et al.
    2011Sci...333.1602D 440 citations

  15. THE OCCURRENCE RATE OF SMALL PLANETS AROUND SMALL STARS
    Dressing, Courtney D., Charbonneau, David
    2013ApJ...767...95D 433 citations

  16. THE OCCURRENCE OF POTENTIALLY HABITABLE PLANETS ORBITING M DWARFS ESTIMATED FROM THE FULL KEPLER DATASET AND AN EMPIRICAL MEASUREMENT OF THE DETECTION SENSITIVITY
    Dressing, Courtney D., Charbonneau, David
    2015ApJ...807...45D 393 citations

  17. OVERVIEW OF THE KEPLER SCIENCE PROCESSING PIPELINE
    Jenkins, Jon M., Caldwell, Douglas A., Chandrasekaran, Hema, et al.
    2010ApJ...713L..87J 393 citations

  18. 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 388 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 387 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 380 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)

  • Savanov, I (24 publications)

  • Kipping, D (23 publications)

  • Kane, S (15 publications)

  • Kjurkchieva, D (15 publications)

  • Jenkins, J (15 publications)

  • Rappaport, S (14 publications)

  • Baran, A (14 publications)

  • Borucki, W (14 publications)

  • Murphy, S (14 publications)

  • Steffen, J (13 publications)

  • Scaringi, S (13 publications)

  • Beck, P (12 publications)

  • Heller, R (12 publications)

  • Huber, D (12 publications)

  • Armstrong, D (12 publications)

  • Stello, D (12 publications)

  • Mosser, B (11 publications)

  • Guzik, J (11 publications)

  • Petigura, E (11 publications)

  • Lee, J (11 publications)

  • Hekker, S (11 publications)

  • Corsaro, E (11 publications)

  • Gaidos, E (11 publications)

  • David, T (11 publications)

  • Vanderburg, A (11 publications)

  • Metcalfe, T (10 publications)

  • Molnar, L (10 publications)

  • Wang, J (10 publications)

  • Campante, T (10 publications)

  • Zhu, W (10 publications)

  • Santerne, A (10 publications)

  • Van Eylen, V (10 publications)

  • Masuda, K (10 publications)

  • Mathur, S (10 publications)

  • Lund, M (10 publications)

  • Plachy, E (10 publications)

  • Hippke, M (10 publications)

  • Silva Aguirre, V (9 publications)

  • Ramsay, G (9 publications)

  • Mann, A (9 publications)

  • Reed, M (9 publications)

  • Chaplin, W (9 publications)

  • Hermes, J (9 publications)

  • Morris, B (9 publications)

  • Dressing, C (9 publications)

  • Molenda-Zakowicz, J (9 publications)

  • Hirano, T (8 publications)

  • Mocnik, T (8 publications)

  • Lillo-Box, J (8 publications)

  • Christiansen, J (8 publications)

  • Ostensen, R (8 publications)

  • Karoff, C (8 publications)

  • Guo, Z (8 publications)

  • Davenport, J (8 publications)

  • Kato, T (8 publications)

  • Kallinger, T (8 publications)

  • Bowman, D (8 publications)

  • Sanchis-Ojeda, R (8 publications)

  • Howell, S (8 publications)

  • Buldgen, G (8 publications)

  • Owen, J (7 publications)

  • Torres, G (7 publications)

  • Katsova, M (7 publications)

  • Bellinger, E (7 publications)

  • Tkachenko, A (7 publications)

  • Borkovits, T (7 publications)

  • Barclay, T (7 publications)

  • Arkhypov, O (7 publications)

  • Almenara, J (7 publications)

  • Dai, F (7 publications)

  • Lissauer, J (7 publications)

  • Miglio, A (7 publications)

  • Gilliland, R (7 publications)

  • Dong, Y (7 publications)

  • Dawson, R (7 publications)

  • Martin, D (7 publications)

  • Salabert, D (7 publications)

  • Shporer, A (7 publications)

  • Weiss, L (7 publications)

  • Garcia, R (7 publications)

  • Reinhold, T (7 publications)

  • Montet, B (7 publications)

  • Wang, S (7 publications)

  • Zeng, L (7 publications)

  • Nielsen, M (7 publications)

  • Jeffery, C (6 publications)

  • Szabo, R (6 publications)

  • Basri, G (6 publications)

  • Johnson, J (6 publications)

  • Faigler, S (6 publications)

  • Aerts, C (6 publications)

  • Ulusoy, C (6 publications)

  • Chatterjee, S (6 publications)

  • Bonomo, A (6 publications)

  • Diez Alonso, E (6 publications)

  • Benomar, O (6 publications)

  • Benko, J (6 publications)

  • Muirhead, P (6 publications)

  • Papics, P (6 publications)

  • Carter, J (6 publications)

  • Ziegler, C (6 publications)

  • Deheuvels, S (6 publications)

  • Batalha, N (6 publications)

  • Fuller, J (6 publications)

  • Demory, B (6 publications)

  • White, T (6 publications)

  • Nesvorny, D (6 publications)

  • Belkacem, K (6 publications)

  • Notsu, Y (6 publications)

  • Lopez, E (6 publications)

  • Colon, K (6 publications)

  • Szabo, G (6 publications)

  • Ansdell, M (6 publications)

  • Gizis, J (6 publications)

  • Koch, D (6 publications)

  • Morton, T (6 publications)