[vsnet-grb-info 3841] GCN Reports: a new product

[GCN Circulars]

TO   All GCN Participants (Notices and Circulars)
RE   A new type of results communication service
DT   01 Oct 06

INTRO:
This is the announcement for a new product within GCN -- the "GCN Reports".
These are short (1-2 page), final descriptions of the observations and results
of a group's follow-up efforts on a specific burst.

MOTIVATION:
These "reports" are being created to encourage people to publish their
fully-processed data; especially the many observers that don't have
enough observations by themselves to make their own paper.  By having
this publication mechanism, then they can get their 1,2,3,N observations
out there for other people to use in their papers, and get officially recognized
for their contribution (via a reference citation).
A second motivation is that it will provide the Swift Team with a vehicle
to distribute their gamma/x/optical lightcurves in a more timely way.

PRODUCT NAME:
* Currently in the GCN system, there are two products: "Notices" and "Circulars".
* This new product is called "Reports".
* The citation for a report would look like: "GCN Report 27.1"
  (where 27 is the serial number and 1 is the version number).
  This matches the citation style of Nature, ApJ, & MNRAS for the Circulars:
  "GCN Circ. NNNN".

CONTENT:
The guidelines for the content of these Reports are:
* Observations, fully processed/corrected analyzed, all collected together
  (just as if it were a formal publication -- this is intended to be
  very much like a formal publication).  Because the Circulars are
  published in near real time, the data points may not always have the full
  corrections and calibration applied -- the Reports solve that deficiency. 
  By having these fully-corrected data points, other authors can include
  your data points in their calculations/models/publications.
* Reports should not be copies of your Circular.  Reports should be issued
  only if you have done significant improvement in the data reduction analysis.
* These "reports" are short -- of order 50-100 lines of text.
* Figures are encouraged.  Tables of the data points in those figures
  are encouraged (or just the table if a figure is not warranted).
* Total length is 1-2 pages.
* No theory.  (theory papers should go to astro-ph)
* But there can be very brief discussions/interpretations/implications section.
* For data reduction/analysis, a section on this topic can be included 
  if something special was done  -- beyond the standard method(s), eg handling
  of pulse pile up; a near-by bright star; etc.
* One burst per one Report.  Do not combine the observations from two or more bursts
  into a single Report.

UPDATABLE:
* These Reports are updatable, ie revisions can be issued.
  (This updating capability is really only for Swift submissions, but others might
  make use of it as well.)
* Authors will be encouraged to include a "deltas" paragraph in each update.
  Where "deltas" means what has changed from the previous version 
  to this version; eg. "Fig 2 has another 100 Ksec of observations".
* There will be a 'serial_number' and a 'version_number'.  The author assigns
  the version_number, and I/GCN assigns the serial_number (starting from 1).
* All versions will stay permanently accessible to the public (ie on the
  GCN website).
* While updated versions from all observers are allowed, it is envisioned
  that the Swift Team is the dominate reason for allowing updates.  This will
  allow the Swift Team to publish an initial Report on a burst (to publish
  the lightcurve quickly), and then as follow-up observations continue
  on that burst, the lightcurves can be updated as the follow-up observations
  increase (eg T+2 days, 4 days, 7 days, 14, etc,  until no more follow-ups
  are made by Swift).

MEDIA:
* Initially, only PDF format will be accepted.
  (Later on, HTML may also be accepted.  This will be a balance of ease-of-effort
  for the submiter vs the amount of work for GCN.)
* All the text, figures and tables are combined into a single PDF file.

FIGURES & TABLES:
* Figures are encouraged in these "Reports" -- a lightcurve is worth
  a thousand words.  (If you only have a handful of points, then a table
  is sufficient.)
* Tables are also encouraged.  The values displayed in a lightcurve plot
  should be included in a table in the Report (with error bar values included).
  (To reiterate, these Reports are to allow other people to use your data
  in a citable form in their papers.  They need the data points in text tabular
  form.)

REFERENCES:
Inside these Reports:
* References to GCN Circulars should be of the form
  "J. Doe, et al., GCN Circ. 5523".
* References to journal articles, books, etc, should follow the standard
  conventions and formats.  They can be in-line or collected at the end
  of the Report.

FORMAT STYLE:
* You can use any formatting style you wish for the text and figures.
* For the text part, 1 or 2 columns is acceptable.
* ApJ, Nature, MNRAS, etc are all acceptable styles. (There are convenient
  LateX style files for these formats than can be used.  And then when
  the PostScript file is produced, conversion to PDF is a simple matter.)
  Free-text is also acceptable.
* Figures and Tables should be numbered and have a caption.
* Figures should have labels for the x- & y-axes.
* At a bare minimum, there needs to be a Title, an Author list (with simple
  institutional affiliations), text, figures, and tables.
  Abstracts are discouraged -- these Reports are already short enough
  that they do not need an abstract.

TIMESCALE:
* These are NOT immediate publications, but they should still be timely.
* Depending on your particular type of observation, the time-for-submission
  should be in the few days to two weeks range.
* Swift will be a special case, because the community's need for gamma, xray, & optical
  lightcurves is sooner than for other ground-based types of observations.
* In practice, there will be no cut-off time limit on the publication; if you
  wait a year, it will be published too.  However, if you wait that long,
  I suspect nobody will ever make use of your observations.

REPORTS ARE NOT REQUIRED:
If a person/group submits a Circular (about their observations on a given burst),
they are definitely NOT required to later submit a Report.  I do not want
to discourage people from making that initial Circular submission
on their onesie/twosie data points.  Those timely initial observations are important
to rest of the follow-up community trying to develop their follow-up observing
plans.  If you are only going to commit to one (Circulars or Reports), it is
much more desirable to submit the Circular than the Report (ie timeliness before
ultimate accuracy).

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE STEPS:
1) The author prepares the text and any figures/tables into a single PDF file.
2) Send that PDF file to scott at milkyway.gsfc.nasa.gov (as an email attachment).
   (Do NOT send it to the Circulars address as this will likely be accepted
   and therefore distributed to the community by the automated demon;
   which will be somewhat embarrassing.)
3) I will unpack it and apply a watermark (down the side like astro-ph)
   that has the SerialNumber, VersionNumber, and the arrival date-stamp.
4) I will post it to the webpage: gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/report_archive.html
   (Very similar to the way the Circulars are posted on the web site.)
[Maybe later this will be automated with an upload-page on the GCN website.]
5) I will send out a short message to the Circulars list that this new Report
   is available.  A URL to the new Report will be included.
6) You click the URL in the Announcement email (or go to the GCN webpage)
   to download the PDF file.  [It is possible that these Reports
   could be "pushed" to you like the Circulars are email pushed, but until
   I hear a groundswell of desire for pushed Reports, they will be 
   only available by "pulling" them from the website.]

NEW REPORT AVAILABLE ANNOUNCEMENTS:
* The announcement email will look something like:
        GCN_Report 27.1 has been posted:
           http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/reports/report_27_1.pdf
        by A. Firstauthor, [et al.]
        titled "Final analysis of Swift GRB 060929".

DISABLING RECEIVING REPORT ANNOUNCEMENTS:
I set it up that everyone in the Circulars list will receive these
Report Announcements.  If you do not wish to receive them,
send me an email and I will disable them to you (set the no_receive_report flag).
This is done on a recipient-by-recipient basis.  (Note that for the ~5% of you
that have multiple entries in the Circulars list and that have N-1 
of those entries set up with the no_receive_circular flag, then I copied
that pattern of receive-vs-no_receive for these Report_announcements.)

EDITORIAL ACTIVITY:
* In general, there will be no editorial review of the content of each Report.
  It will be posted as received to the website.
  However, if there you submit a particularly egregious violation of the guidelines.
  then the author may be asked to resubmit a revised copy of the Report.

MINOR CHANGE TO THE CIRCULARS:
To make the distinction between the Reports and the Circulars a little clearer,
I have changed the TITLE line in the Circulars from the current value:
        TITLE: GCN GRB OBSERATION REPORT
to:
        TITLE: GCN CIRCULAR
The "observation report" phrasing was chosen ~8 years ago.  It was appropriate,
but given the creation of the new Reports, this phrasing should be discarded
in favor of the more common usage of Circular when referring to these things.

FINAL COMMENT:
All of this is contained in the GCN web page:
        http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gcn/reports.html