Referencing Data Sets in Astronomical Literature


The Astrophysics Data Centers Executive Council (ADEC) has recommended a naming convention for referencing datasets in astronomical literature. The convention is basically to add a prefix to the current dataset names producing a reference of the form:

ADS/facility#identifier
where

The list of MAST-relevant facilities registered with the ADS are stored online in an xml-format file at: archive.stsci.edu/profile/mast_profile.xml and include the following:

Note that the ASTRO telescopes are considered Shuttle experiments rather than satellites so they have the "Sh" rather than "Sa" notation for the observatory, (which I guess is technically true, they were never released from the shuttle.

Examples of valid names would be:

To search for a given data set using the above naming conventions, go to http://vo.ads.harvard.edu/dv/DataVerifier.cgi. This will search not only MAST, but all the NASA data centers. More information on the ADS dataset verification service can be found at http://ads.harvard.edu/www/dv.

To verify the existence of particular MAST data sets using the standard naming conventions, and display the recommended data set reference following the AAS guidelines, go to http://archive.stsci.edu/dataset_verifier.php".

The complete list of ADS registered facilities is available at http://ads.harvard.edu/www/dv/facilities.txt. More information on the proposed dataset identifiers and how to specify them in an AASTeX manuscript, can be found at Chandra web site at: http://cxc.harvard.edu/cda/datasetid.html.