SDSS-IV Publication Policy

According to Section 3.1 of the SDSS-IV PoO, Participants may request permission to share a limited and approved portion of the SDSS proprietary data archive with non-Participants who are not at member institutions of the SDSS-IV for collaborative research on a specific topic or project. The policy regarding use of proprietary SDSS data by these non-participants, or external collaborators, can be found in the

Policy for external collaborators

Once granted limited data access, non-participants must read and agree to the contents of this document and follow the rules described herein. Non-participants violating these rules may lose their External Collaborator status and data access.

To ensure that SDSS-IV publications fairly represent the contributions of those involved and that publications are vetted in a timely and efficient manner, scientific papers based on unreleased SDSS-IV data will be handled as follows:

a. As soon as a specific scientific investigation begins, a project team of SDSS-IV collaboration members identifies a team contact who must fill out the form at the SDSS-IV Projects Web Page listing a project title, a list of current project members, and a brief abstract of the intended project. An electronic announcement of the project will then be automatically sent to the collaboration. At this, and any other stage of the process, other collaboration members can join the project.

b. When the scientific paper has been written, the project team posts the paper to the Publication Archive as a pending paper, which will send an electronic notification to the sdss4-general mailing list. This announcement must indicate the journal to which the paper will be submitted. Posting a manuscript to the Publication Archives indicates that the analysis group considers the paper ready for submission to the journal; at most any remaining intended changes should be very limited in scope and described in the comments that accompany the posting. Collaboration members have three weeks to make comments, request co-authorship, etc, to the project team contact (with copies sent to the SPC). The team contact is required to circulate substantive comments received on the paper’s content, along with the team’s response. The project team revises the paper in response to the comments and other requests it deems valid. The SPC, or a representative of the SPC, also checks that the authorship, references, and acknowledgements fairly represent the contributions made to the publication, in particular checking that the appropriate SDSS-IV technical publications are referenced. The SPC carries out this duty within the same three-week period. All science publications, with the possible exception of conference proceedings, must contain the standard SDSS-IV acknowledgement, which is maintained by the Spokesperson and posted on the Publications Archive. A publication can be withdrawn at any stage of this process.

c. The authors revise the paper according to comments and suggestions from the collaboration. At the end of the three week period, or at the end of the revision process (whichever is longer), the final version of the paper is posted to the Publications Archive and, as a professional courtesy, a final version of the paper should be sent to all co-authors by the lead author(s) 48 hours before submission to a journal (and/or the arXiv archive) to solicit any final critical comments or issues. After this final stage, the paper, its results and accompanying material may normally be submitted for publication in a journal and to the arXiv archive (the latter is left to the discretion of the lead author(s)). The paper is not considered public until its embargo is lifted by the lead author(s), as indicated at its posting in the Publications Archive (or until its appearance in the arXiv archive or the publication to which it was submitted, should the lead author(s) neglect to lift the embargo before then). Until the embargo is lifted, the paper and its results cannot be quoted in public, referenced in other publications, etc. without the permission of the lead author(s).

d. When a project team makes revisions in response to an external referee report, it should post the final accepted or published version on the Publications Archive. In cases of disputes about credit, authorship, or scientific results, the SPC shall work with the author(s) and collaboration members to resolve them. In cases where a dispute cannot be resolved, the issue will be settled by the Spokesperson. Decisions by the Spokesperson may be appealed to the Director, or, if the Director has a conflict of interest, to the Advisory Council Executive Committee.

Publications based on projects started with proprietary SDSS-IV data should follow the publication procedure outlined in this section, even if the data being used has become public during the project and before any publications have been finished and posted to the SDSS-IV publication page. This was standard practice in SDSS-I/II/III.

A scientific paper will include in its author list any individual who has made a significant contribution to that specific research project, along with all Architects who have requested authorship. Authorship requests should be made via the webform available through a link on the publication page. With the exception of Architects, those requesting co-authorship must include a brief description of their contributions to the project.The first author, in consultation with the analysis team, may determine an acknowledgment is more appropriate in some cases.

Anyone who has been placed on a paper’s author list may make a request to the paper’s team contact at any time that her or his name be removed from the paper and it shall be removed.

We stress that all authors should have read and broadly understood the content of all papers they are co-authors on. SDSS-IV’s co-authorship policies reflect the spirit of guidelines outlined by professional societies such as the American Astronomical Society and the American Physical Society and as cited in the PoO-IV.

In addition to following the above policies, lead authors should keep co-authors informed and their consent obtained as for non-SDSS papers.

6.2.1 Two-group author order

The scientific achievements of the SDSS are truly collaboration achievements, because the SDSS hardware and software make possible projects that would in many cases be inconceivable without them (or without some similarly ambitious undertaking). However, an authorship policy that strictly recognizes all scientific papers purely as products of the collaboration (e.g., alphabetical authorship on all papers) runs the risk of making the individuals in the project effectively anonymous, and it provides little incentive for project participants to analyze the data quickly rather than wait for data to become public. Therefore for most SDSS-IV scientific publications, the order of authorship will not be alphabetical. One alternative is a “two-group” system. The first group of authors, the “analysis group”, will consist of those who were heavily involved in the specific analysis described in the paper and in the writing of the paper. The other group will consist of all other authors on the paper and will be ordered alphabetically after the analysis group authors.

Membership in the analysis group and order of authorship within the analysis group is decided by those involved in writing the paper, just as they would decide on membership and order in the author list if they were writing a non-SDSS science paper.

6.2.2 Alphabetical author order

For some key papers, the author list may be alphabetical. To ensure that the publication plan is clear to collaboration members from the start, the announcement of projects (See Section 6.1.a) where one or more of the resulting papers is expected to have an alphabetical author list should include the planned scope of such papers along with their identification as alphabetical author papers.

a. Prospective authors of a technical paper must submit to the Technical Publications Coordinator (TPC) a summary of the proposed paper, which includes an outline, expected author list, and a justification for designation as a technical paper. Authors are encouraged to consult with the TPC and the Survey Science Teams during the development of the proposal. The TPC will present the proposal to the Management Council (MC), which will decide in a timely manner whether to designate the work as a technical paper. The MC’s decision in the matter is final.
b. When a technical paper has been approved, the project team working on the technical aspects should identify a team contact who then fills out the form at the SDSS-IV Projects Web Page listing a project title, a list of current project members, and a brief abstract of the intended project. An electronic announcement of the project will then be automatically sent to the collaboration.
c. When the project team has prepared a submission-ready (see Section 6.1.b) paper, they post it to the Publications Archive. This announcement must indicate the journal to which the paper will be submitted. The TPC, or a representative of the TPC, will review the paper to ensure that the authorship, references, and acknowledgements fairly represent the contributions made to the publication. All technical publications must contain the standard SDSS-IV acknowledgement, which is maintained by the Spokesperson and posted on the Publications Archive.
d. The TPC and collaboration members have three weeks to send comments to/request changes from the lead author. Copies of comments should also be sent to the TPC. The lead author(s) follows the procedures for revisions in response to comments in Section 6.1.c.
e. The lead author posts the final draft on the Publications Archive and submits the paper to the appropriate journal and the arXiv archive. The contents of the paper may thereafter be quoted in public presentations, etc., by members of SDSS-IV.
f. When a technical paper is revised in response to an external referee report, the lead author will post the final version on the Publication Archive.

In the case of disputes about technical publications, which the TPC cannot resolve, the matter may be referred to the Spokesperson for a decision. Decisions by the Spokesperson may be appealed to the Director, or, if the Director has a conflict of interest, to the Advisory Council Executive Committee.

Those who have worked on a particular component or subsystem will author the appropriate technical paper, with author order decided by the authors. In contrast to scientific publications, Architects who are not part of the project team may not request co-authorship. Lead authors should discuss questions or concerns about the author list with the TPC. In addition to following the above policies, lead authors should keep co-authors informed and their consent obtained as for non-SDSS papers.

a. When the Spokesperson and STCs have prepared a submission-ready (see Section 6.1.b) paper, they post it to the Publication Archive. This announcement must indicate the journal to which the paper will be submitted. All data-release papers must contain the standard SDSS-IV acknowledgement, which is maintained by the Spokesperson and posted on the Publications Archive.
b. Collaboration members have three weeks to send comments to/request changes from the Spokesperson and STCs. The Spokesperson follows the procedures for revisions in response to comments in Section 6.1.c.
c. The Spokesperson posts the final draft on the Publication Archive and submits the paper to the appropriate journal and the arXiv.
d. When a data-release paper is revised in reponse to external referee report, the Spokesperson will post the final version to the Publication Archive.

The Spokesperson and SST Chairs, in consultation with the CoCo, shall also determine the author list. All data release papers have alphabetical author lists. Those who have contributed to the writing of the data release paper or who have contributed in a substantive way (typically one month of effort) to the creation or science validation of the data described in the paper are eligible to be authors. Only persons who request to be co-authors are included on the author list. In addition to following the above policies, lead authors should keep co-authors informed and their consent obtained as for non-SDSS papers. Unresolved disputes about authorship will be settled by the Spokesperson. Decisions by the Spokesperson may be appealed to the Director, or, if the Director has a conflict of interest, to the Advisory Council Executive Committee.

In oral or display presentations, colloquium or conference speakers and presenters may, upon consultation with the project team contact, make use of SDSS-IV results that have not (yet) appeared in papers submitted to the Publication Archive and subsequently published or posted to arXiv as a submitted paper. Conference presenters are expected to give appropriate credit to the SDSS-IV Collaboration and to those involved in producing the results shown or described. Results should be presented from announced projects only.

If the conference organizers are uploading the conference proceedings to a publicly accessible site, the relevant working group or survey must be consulted before any material not yet appearing in a submitted and unembarged paper or in a published (including on arXiv) paper is included. In all cases, only material presented in public by the speakers can be posted to conference websites (i.e., extra slides containing unpublished results must be removed if not presented in public as part of the talk).

Conference proceedings are required to follow the publication procedure described in Section 6.1. In special cases, given the realities of conference proceedings submission deadlines, the authors may request from the Spokesperson an exception from some or all of the publication process requirements, such as exemption from including the full SDSS-IV Acknowledgments.
Such requests should be submitted at least three weeks prior to the submission deadline.

Because of the practical constraints of page limits, submissions to conference proceedings are not required to follow the authorship policy of other scientific publications. However, any conference paper that does not follow this authorship policy may only include quantitative results (tables and figures, for example) based on papers that have been published or submitted for publication, and it must reference those papers as the primary source for the results. The rationale for this requirement is that conference papers authored by a single author or a small group should not become the primary reference for results that are properly products of the SDSS-IV Collaboration.