Information Scientists: Between Editors and Data Centers

International audienceSince the emergence of electronic publications in the early 1990s, astronomy has played a pioneering role in the development and implementation of new capabilities and services. As a data center, the CDS contributed significantly to this evolution: a synergy between data centers and journal editors started in the 1990s with the publication of large tables and data sets in electronic form and contributed to an efficient linking of publications with existing databases like SIMBAD or NED. This collaborative work, carried out in practice by information scientists, illustrates a new role for us who now have to deal with both editor and database requirements. After a short description of the CDS, we present our peculiar responsibilities related to the publication process: ensuring, prior to publication, that the link from selected objects quoted by the authors in their papers to the SIMBAD database is correct and maintained in the long term, that the tables and their complete descriptions are accessible through VizieR, and that the data and bibliography are correctly entered in SIMBAD. The Dictionary of Nomenclature, which plays an important role in these procedures, is briefly presented. Finally, the skills we developed for these activities are shortly discussed

DJIN: Detection in Journals of Identifiers and Names

International audienceWe dreamed of it, we developed it, and now we use it.DJIN is a powerful tool that recognizes astronomical object names in full texts.DJIN is very efficient and helpful for the SIMBAD team who have been dealing with an ever increasing number of astronomical articles.DJIN detects most of the astronomical object names quoted in full-text articles, but the team still has to check and validate the names, to deal with new identifiers, to verify cross-identifications and to update SIMBAD with new astronomical data (position, magnitudes, etc.). That is, the team work is concentrated on value-added aspects, the best use of the team's expertise. This was an important consideration in the design of the software.DJIN provides more than just the recognition of names; it says how many times an astronomical object is cited in a text (whatever its identifier is), where it is cited (title, abstracts, keyword, tables, figures, text, etc.) and keeps track of the relation between the identifiers and articles.DJIN is fully integrated in the SIMBAD process, and interfaces the updating software used daily by the team. It is also a starting point for new features like linking SIMBAD and NED, and computing the relevance of each paper attached to one object.DJIN has been fully tested by the whole team to check both the quality of detection and the tool's ergonomics. Team feedback has been critical for the success of this difficult and risky endeavor.In this paper we describe this tool, and our experience after two years of usage; we discuss also the the significant changes in our daily work that DJIN has triggered

The New Version of SIMBAD

International audienceA new version of SIMBAD, SIMBAD4, has been developed at the CDS. Basically, everything that SIMBAD does today will be possible with the new version but not necessarily in the same way. The new features will concern the queries, flux, object types and hierarchical links

The Content of the CDS Services

International audienceThe CDS value-added bibliographic services, SIMBAD and VizieR, are updated daily. Most of the information comes from the astronomical literature and the update mechanism is different for different types of information. The semi-automated SIMBAD data flow is described and the synergy between astronomers, specialized librarians and computer engineers is discussed

What Is SIMBAD, and What Is It Not?

International audienceThe purpose of the SIMBAD database is to provide the bibliography and some fundamental data on astronomical objects of interest which have been studied in scientific articles. It includes objects of any nature, stars - galaxies - interstellar medium - transient events - etc. SIMBAD is a meta-compilation built from what is published in the literature, and from our expertise on cross-identifications. It is a dynamic database, updated every working day. By construction its content is heterogeneous as data come from any kind of instruments at all wavelengths with any resolution and astrometry, and different names from one publication to another. Thus SIMBAD is not a catalogue, and should not be used as a catalogue. It is not the purpose of SIMBAD to contain “everything”. Especially, lists of uncharacterised sources detected in photometric surveys of any size are usually not processed in SIMBAD. But they are available at CDS in the VizieR database which contains published tables of objects, as well as most very large surveys. The idea now is to use both SIMBAD and VizieR as complementary research tools