Accomazzi, A.

Budavári, T.

Fluke, C.

Gray, N.

Mann, R.G.

O'Mullane, W.

Wicenec, A.

Wise, M.

English

We introduce Astronomy and Computing (A&amp;C), a new, peer-reviewed journal for the expanding community of people whose work focuses on the application of computer science and information technology within astronomy, rather than on astronomical research per se. A&amp;C arose from a BoF discussion at the ADASS XX conference in Boston, and from the ADASS community will come many of the people who will write, referee and read the papers published in A&amp;C. In this paper, we outline the aims and scope of A&amp;C, together with a summary of the types of paper we envisage it publishing and the criteria that will be used to referee them, and we invite the ADASS community to help us develop these in more detail and to shape a journal that serves the astronomical computing community well

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UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl)UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository)Astronomy and Computing: A New Journal for the Astronomical ComputingCommunityMann, R.G.; Accomazzi, A.; Budavári, T.; Fluke, C.; Gray, N.; O'Mullane, W.; Wicenec, A.;Wise, M.Publication date2013Document VersionFinal published versionPublished inAstronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XXIILink to publicationCitation for published version (APA):Mann, R. G., Accomazzi, A., Budavári, T., Fluke, C., Gray, N., O'Mullane, W., Wicenec, A., &Wise, M. (2013). Astronomy and Computing: A New Journal for the Astronomical ComputingCommunity. In D. N. Friedel (Ed.), Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XXII:proceedings of a conference held at University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois, USA, 4-8November 2012 (pp. 7-10). (Astronomical Society of the Pacific conference series; Vol. 475).Astronomical Society of the Pacific.http://aspbooks.org/a/volumes/article_details/?paper_id=35557General rightsIt is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s)and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an opencontent license (like Creative Commons).Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, pleaselet the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the materialinaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letterto: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Youwill be contacted as soon as possible.Download date:10 Mar 2023Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XXIIASP Conference Series, Vol. 475Douglas N. Friedel, ed.c©2013 Astronomical Society of the PacificAstronomy and Computing: A New Journal for the AstronomicalComputing CommunityRobert G. Mann,1 Alberto Accomazzi,2 Tamás Budavári,3 Christopher Fluke,4Norman Gray,5 William O’Mullane,6 Andreas Wicenec,7 and Michael Wise8(The editors of Astronomy and Computing)1Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh, Royal Observatory,Blackford Hill, Edinburgh, EH9 3HJ, UK2Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge,MA 02138, USA3Department of Physics and Astronomy, The Johns Hopkins University, 3400North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA4Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University ofTechnology, 1 Alfred Street, Hawthorn, 3122, Australia5School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ,UK6European Space Agency, European Space Astronomy Centre, E-28691Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain7International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, University of WesternAustralia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia8ASTRON (Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy), P.O. Box 2, 7990 AADwingeloo, The NetherlandsAbstract. We introduce Astronomy and Computing (A&C), a new, peer-reviewedjournal for the expanding community of people whose work focuses on the applica-tion of computer science and information technology within astronomy, rather than onastronomical research per se. A&C arose from a BoF discussion at the ADASS XXconference in Boston, and from the ADASS community will come many of the peoplewho will write, referee and read the papers published in A&C. In this paper,1 we outlinethe aims and scope of A&C, together with a summary of the types of paper we envisageit publishing and the criteria that will be used to referee them, and we invite the ADASScommunity to help us develop these in more detail and to shape a journal that servesthe astronomical computing community well.1A longer version of this material can be found in the editorial from the inaugural issue of A&C, availablefrom http://arxiv.org/abs/1210.8030.78 Mann et al.1. Introduction: From ADASS BoF to JournalADASS attendees do not need to be told that computing is an increasingly importantpart of astronomy, nor that its importance is not adequately reflected within the astro-nomical literature. In an attempt to address the latter situation, the publications BoFat the Boston ADASS in 2010 included a session to discuss whether there was a needfor a journal for the astronomical computing community. As input to that discussion,two of the present authors sent a set of abstracts from the previous year’s ADASS con-ference to the editors of several a priori likely journals and asked each whether theywould fall within scope for their journal. The responses (summarised by Gray & Mann2011) varied slightly between the main astronomical journals that hold most weight forthis community, but the key finding from this exercise was that, unsurprisingly, thesejournals view technical computational material as a means to an end – the justificationof a scientific result – rather than an end in itself.This result was borne out by personal experiences expressed in the BoF, wherea number of people noted that they tended to publish mainly/only in the ADASS pro-ceedings, because of the difficulty of finding getting technical computational paperspublished anywhere else. Gray & Mann (2011) presented three main reasons why thecommunity should no longer make do with such a publication regime, centred on theunrefereed proceedings of an annual conference: (i) a conference presents a singlesubmission deadline per year, forcing authors to publish when the opportunity arises,not when the status of their project merits it; (ii) peer review can provide a qualitythreshold, and the existence of guidelines will lead authors to justify and elaborate theirarguments to a greater degree, producing more comprehensive papers; and (iii) a jour-nal – and especially a predominantly online journal – will not have the space constraintsthat bedevil conference proceedings, and so will allow authors to give their material thedetail it requires, and set it properly into its broad context of previous work in a wayimpossible in a brief conference report.The BoF concluded that there was a need for an astronomical computing journal –by a show of hands, a strong majority of those present indicated that they would submitto, referee for and read such a journal, should one exist – but there was an equally strongconclusion that the community lacked the resources needed to establish such a journal.Some time after the BoF, its organisers (NG and RGM) were approached by Elsevier,starting a long series of discussions which has resulted in the launch of a new journal,Astronomy and Computing,2 with an Editorial Board comprising the authors of thispaper, and a Science Advisory Board that features a number of senior figures from theastronomical computing community.3In what follows we outline the aims and scope of A&C and the types of paperthat we imagine it will publish. The new journal is, however, intended to serve therequirements of the astronomical computing community, and we strongly encouragethe ADASS community to engage actively with the A&C board members to help ensurethat it does meet those needs in an effective manner.2A&C website: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ascom3See http://www.journals.elsevier.com/astronomy-and-computing/editorial-board/Astronomy and Computing 92. Aims and ScopeAs the journal’s web page says, ”A&C will focus on the broad area between astronomy,computer science and information technology. The journal aims to publish the work ofscientists and (software) engineers in all aspects of astronomical computing.” The webpage also includes the following list of example topics:• Scientific software engineering• Computational infrastructure• Computational techniques used for astrophysical simulations• Visualization• Data management, archives, and virtual observatory• Data analysis, data mining and statistics• Data processing pipeline and automated systems• Semantics, data citation and data preservationThis list is illustrative only: the defining feature of an A&C paper will be thatit focuses on computation in support of astronomy, not on the astronomical resultsobtained using computation. The detailed definition of this identity and shape willemerge in the first years of the journal’s existence, and we anticipate having more back-and-forth during that period between authors, reviewers and editors than is usual in anestablished journal, as we collectively work out the ideal structure and content of anarticle in this area, and collectively identify what is and what is not in scope for thefield.3. Types of ArticlePerhaps the best way of describing the journal’s large scope is to outline the range ofarticles that we anticipate accepting for publication, and what we believe to be neces-sary or distinctive about them. We can identify at least the following broad categories,without necessarily being committed to this set indefinitely.The most typical research (or standard) articleswill describe an innovative pieceof work in the area, whether this is a distinct project – a new algorithm, or system, orapproach, or application – or a major change in an established system, such as therestructuring of an existing pipeline. We expect to see a broad range of articles in thiscategory, but there are some particular species we can identify from the outset.One of these cases will be the software release articles. While a new major re-lease of a piece of software, or a library, will be a natural point at which to consideran A&C article, it is not simply the increment of the version number that will warrantpublication, but perhaps the intellectual contributions of a new algorithm, or the ed-ucative experience of a new software engineering process, or novel technology. WhileA&C will be a natural home for a ‘code paper’, it will not act as a repository for signif-icant bodies of code itself: code snippets may be included in papers, and short piecesof code submitted as supplementary material for the online edition of the journal, butwe anticipate that a software release that is worth an A&C article will be one that isalso worth being professionally packaged and released at a stable URL, preferably withthe source being additionally available in a public code repository (and we will suggestsome suitable repositories in the author instructions).10 Mann et al.Similarly, A&C will be a natural home for data release articles, provided thatthese have significant technical content. The journal’s scope gives the authors of suchan article the space to be as technically detailed as they could want in their descriptionof the development and delivery of a new dataset, and might be a natural counterpart toa simultaneous astronomy article in another journal, concentrating on science results.We encourage the community to contribute notes on practice. These will be ac-counts of ‘lessons learned’ in the course of trying, and either succeeding or failingwith, some technology or apparently promising approach. They are likely to describethe first, or at least an early, application of a technology to a problem in astronomy,or an application at a scale or in a fashion that represents a significant commitment ofintellectual energy. It should be irrelevant whether the application of that technologysucceeded or failed: in either case, the project should be analysed in enough detail, andat such a level of abstraction, that it would allow a reader to understand why the projectsucceeded or failed, and to be able to use the information to predict with some confi-dence whether a similar planned project would be likely to succeed or fail in its turn.We expect those would most typically be technical reasons, but the social, administra-tive or technical context is important as well: a particular innovation may fail simplybecause it was applied in the wrong context, while it may succeed elsewhere.Such a paper is arguably a type of review article. As well as the obvious ana-logues of review articles from other disciplines, we imagine we will see similar, broadlypedagogical, accounts of technologies applied to astronomical problems. We will alsoconsider white papers, describing the ‘state of the nation’ in some respect, or plans forthe future. These must be authoritative and well-grounded in expertise, and will onlybe accepted in response to an invitation from the editorial board; the same goes forreview articles, and we encourage authors interested in writing one of either of thesearticle types to contact an appropriate editor to discuss the scope and approach of theirproposed paper. All other types of paper will be accepted as unsolicited contributions,although the editors are always available to discuss possible papers with authors.As a form rather than a category, we will also introduce the target article, which isfamiliar in some other academic disciplines but not well known in the physical sciences.From time to time – possibly only once or twice a year – the editors will identifythat a submitted paper provides one side to an argument that is underway within thecommunity, and will, with the authors’ permission, make the paper a target article.They will then solicit substantial commentaries on it (of perhaps one or two pages inlength) and then publish in a single package the original article, its commentaries, anda final summary from the target article’s authors, thereby presenting a broader coverageof the topic than would have resulted from the original paper alone.Finally, we expect to publish occasional special issues, which may collect to-gether papers resulting from a specific conference, relating to a particular major project,marking some substantial milestone or event, or which, through some other connection,comprise a coherent whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.Acknowledgments. We thank José Stoop, the Publisher for Radiation and Spaceat Elsevier, for her work in turning A&C from an idea into a journal.ReferencesGray, N., & Mann, R. G. 2011, in Proceedings of ADASS XX, edited by I. N. Evans, A. Acco-mazzi, D. J. Mink, & A. H. Rots (ASP), vol. 442 of ASP Conference Series, 655

Astronomy and Computing: A New Journal for the Astronomical Computing Community

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Astronomy and Computing: A New Journal for the Astronomical Computing Community

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