A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE PUBLISHING IN ASTRONOMY Coordinated by Claude Bertout, Chris Biemesderfer, Agnès Henri i i “copyright” — 2012/6/21 — 8:32 — page 1 — #1 i i Cover picture: c ESO/B. Tafreshi/TWAN (twanight.org) i i i i i i “contents” — 2012/6/19 — 11:32 — page iii — #1 i i Contents Foreword 1 A brief overview of the publication process in astronomy 3 1 Introduction.................................. 3 2 TheAstronomyPublishingLandscape................... 4 3 The Ethical Requirements of Astronomy Journals . 6 4 ThePeer-ReviewProcess.......................... 8 4.1FirstStep:Editor’sInitialReading.................. 8 4.1.1Articles.............................. 8 4.1.2LetterstotheEditor...................... 8 4.1.3SomeStyleIssues........................ 9 4.2 Scientific Evaluation by the Referee . 10 4.3 Complications in the Peer-Review Process . 11 4.3.1DelayinFindingaReferee................... 11 4.3.2DelayinGettingtheRefereeReport............. 12 4.3.3 Offensive Attitude of Referee or Author . 12 4.4 After Acceptance . 13 5 Toward Open Access for Astronomical Journals? . 14 6 Conclusions.................................. 17 The Core Astronomy Journals 19 1 The American Astronomical Society and its Journals Program . 19 1.1CondensedHistory........................... 19 1.2TheAASToday............................. 21 1.3TheAASJournalsToday....................... 22 1.4TheAstrophysicalJournal....................... 23 1.5TheAstronomicalJournal....................... 24 2 Astronomy&Astrophysics......................... 25 2.1TheA&AScope............................ 27 2.2TheEditorialProcess.......................... 27 2.3TheA&AEconomicModel...................... 31 3 The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . 32 3.1TheRoyalAstronomicalSociety.................... 32 3.2 The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . 33 4 Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific . 35 4.1ASPConferenceSeries......................... 36 References..................................... 37 i i i i i i “contents” — 2012/6/19 — 11:32 — page iv — #2 i i iv A Guide to Effective Publishing in Astronomy How to Write a Good Scientific Journal Paper 39 1 Introduction.................................. 39 2 GeneralStructureofJournalPapers.................... 40 2.1AGoodTitle.............................. 40 2.2DefiningAuthorship.......................... 40 2.3AConciseAbstract........................... 40 2.4MainContent.............................. 41 2.5References................................ 42 2.6Tables.................................. 42 2.7MakingGoodFigures......................... 43 3 CoverLetterInformation.......................... 43 The Editor-Referee System and Publication: An Editor’s View of the Process 45 1 Introduction.................................. 45 2 EvolutionoftheEditorial-RefereeSystem................. 45 2.1 The Origin of Scientific Journals . 45 2.2EntertheReferees........................... 48 2.3 The Vintage Astronomical Journals . 50 3 TheScientificEditorialProcessNow.................... 53 3.1TheEditor................................ 54 3.2TheReferee............................... 55 3.3TheRefereeReport........................... 59 3.4TheReviewProcessasaQueue.................... 60 3.5SecondReferee............................. 63 4 ParticularIssues............................... 63 4.1 The Availability of Information: From Jahrsberichte to the Astronomical Data System (ADS)............... 63 4.2OnAnonymity............................. 64 4.3 Referee Ethics: The Norm and the Breech . 65 4.4Citation:TheEditorialSideoftheIssue............... 66 4.5Series................................... 67 4.6 Multiple Submissions . 69 4.7 Alterations to the Paper Following Acceptance . 69 4.8 Plagiarism: Intellectual Property and Authorship . 69 4.9Ghostand“Honorary”Authorship.................. 71 4.10TheRoleofAcknowledgements.................... 72 5 ConcludingRemarks............................. 73 Dedication.................................... 73 References..................................... 73 Some Additional Readings: . 75 i i i i i i “contents” — 2012/6/19 — 11:32 — page v — #3 i i Contents v Language Editing at Astronomy & Astrophysics 77 1 Background.................................. 77 2 WhyMovetoOnlyEnglishatA&A.................... 78 2.1 English as a Lingua Franca ...................... 79 2.2 Editing for Clear and Correct English Expression . 79 3 WhatisEdited:SeekingQuality...................... 80 3.1WhySimple,asWellasCorrect,English............... 81 3.2WhyFormalEnglish?......................... 83 4 The Role of Language Editing in the Editorial Process . 84 4.1 How to React to Suggestions . 85 5 OtherAspectstoLookat.......................... 86 6 RecommendedResourceswhenWritingforA&A............. 87 7 ConcludingStatement............................ 89 The role of the publisher 91 1 Introduction.................................. 91 2 Management Tools: From Submission to Acceptance . 92 3 Production: From Acceptance to Publication . 92 3.1TheFirstStep:CopyEditing..................... 92 3.2TheSecondStep:Prepress....................... 93 3.3 The Third Step: Publication of the Online Version . 95 3.4 The Fourth Step: The Paper Version – Printing and Dispatching 95 4 WebPlatform................................. 95 CrossRef indexing and hyperlinks in the bibliographic references............................ 95 Online publication of the HTML and PDF versions, electronic-only material, and archiving . 95 Specialized services – reader information . 96 5 CommunicationandMarketing....................... 97 6 Conclusion.................................. 98 Astronomy Libraries – your Gateway to Information 99 1 Introduction.................................. 99 2 WhatLibrariansCanDoforYou...................... 100 3 Two Astronomy Gorillas . 101 3.1 NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) . 101 3.1.1SomeSearchTips........................ 102 3.1.2 Result Lists: Bibcodes, Citation Counts, and Letter Links 104 3.2arXiv.orge-printArchive........................ 105 3.2.1 Manuscripts Uploaded by Authors . 105 3.2.2 Finding your Way Through arXiv/astro-ph . 106 4 Databases Beyond ADS and astro-ph . 107 4.1SPIRES-HEP.............................. 107 4.2GoogleScholar............................. 107 i i i i i i “contents” — 2012/6/19 — 11:32 — page vi — #4 i i vi A Guide to Effective Publishing in Astronomy 4.3Scirus.................................. 107 4.4 ISI Web of Knowledge and Web of Science (WoS) . 108 4.5Scopus.................................. 108 5 CoreAstronomyJournals.......................... 109 6 Open Access . 110 6.1TheOAConcept............................ 110 6.2OAFindingAids............................ 112 6.2.1 Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) . 112 6.2.2OAIster............................. 112 6.2.3ScientificCommons....................... 113 6.2.4 Directory of Open Access Repositories (OpenDOAR) . 113 7 ProblemswithOnlineDocuments...................... 113 7.1 Long-Term Access . 114 7.2 Completeness of Digitized Material.................. 114 7.3DeletedItems.............................. 114 7.4BrokenLinks.............................. 115 8 EverythingisontheInternet...Really?.................. 116 9 OrganizingaPersonalLibrary........................ 116 10BibliometricStudies............................. 120 10.1CaveatsofCitationAnalysis...................... 122 10.2AlternativeMeasures.......................... 123 10.3TelescopeBibliographies........................ 123 11 Cooperations of Librarians and Astronomers . 124 11.1 IAU Commission 5: Working Group Libraries (WG Lib) . 125 11.2 Library and Information Services in Astronomy (LISA) . 125 12Conclusions.................................. 125 References..................................... 126 From your Paper to VizieR and SIMBAD 129 1 Introduction.................................. 129 2 TheVizieRDatabase............................. 131 2.1Content................................. 131 2.2TheReadMeFile............................ 131 2.3VizieR.................................. 134 2.4UsageofVizieR............................. 134 3 HowyourDataareIntegratedinSIMBAD................ 135 3.1AcronymCreationinSIMBAD.................... 135 3.2 Integration of Objects Cited in the Text of Papers into SIMBAD . 136 3.2.1 Tagging Astronomical Objects . 136 3.2.2DesignationsofAstronomicalObjects............. 137 3.2.3 Cross-Identifications Proposed in Papers . 138 3.3 Integration of Catalogs and Tables in SIMBAD . 140 3.4HierarchicalLinks............................ 141 4 TheSIMBADDatabase........................... 142 i i i i i i “contents” — 2012/6/19 — 11:32 — page vii — #5 i i Contents vii 4.1Content................................. 142 4.1.1Identifiers............................ 143 4.1.2BasicData............................ 143 4.1.3 Bibliographical Data . 144 4.1.4SomeStatisticsontheDataContents............. 144 4.2 SIMBAD Access . 145 5 Aladin..................................... 146 5.1AccessingDatafromAladin...................... 147 5.2 Visualizing and Comparing Data with Aladin . 148 6 Conclusion.................................. 149 Appendix..................................... 149 A SIMBADQueryModes........................... 149 A.1BasicQuery............................... 149 A.2SimpleQuery.............................. 150 A.2.1QuerybyIdentifier....................... 150 A.2.2QuerybyCoordinates..................... 150 A.2.3 Query of Bibliographic References . 150 A.3AdvancedQuery............................ 150 A.3.1QuerybyCriteria.......................