Abstract
Astronomy is similar to other scientific disciplines in that scholarly publication relies on the presentation and interpretation of data. But although astronomy now has archives for its primary research telescopes and associated surveys, the highly processed data that is presented in the peer-reviewed journals and is the basis for final analysis and interpretation is generally not archived and has no permanent repository. We have initiated a project whose goal is to implement an end-to-end prototype system which, through a partnership of a professional society, that society’s scholarly publications/publishers, research libraries, and an information technology substrate provided by the Virtual Observatory, will capture high-level digital data as part of the publication process and establish a distributed network of curated, permanent data repositories. The data in this network will be accessible through the research journals, astronomy data centers, and Virtual Observatory data discovery portals.
Highlights
A fundamental aspect of scientific scholarly communication is the presentation of data
In astronomy and many other fields, data is presented in graphical form, but the digital data underlying these graphical representations is not systematically captured and archived
Astronomers are producing and analyzing data at ever more prodigious rates, with projects such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey1 having gathered data at unprecedented rates, raising new challenges and opportunities. This explosion in data-driven science has led to fundamental changes in practice and modes of inquiry, prompting the USbased National Science Foundation (NSF), the UK-based Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), and other agencies and organizations to advance the evaluation and development of Cyberinfrastructure to support large-scale digital science projects
Summary
A fundamental aspect of scientific scholarly communication is the presentation of data. Our vision is to create a cooperative system amongst astronomical researchers, professional societies, publishers, editors, libraries, and the Virtual Observatory in which the literature, the associated digital data, and the underlying data archives interoperate seamlessly and where high-level data products are assured of long-term preservation and curation. This cooperative system involving several large research institutions could serve as a model for other data-driven research disciplines. By incorporating NVO web services into a Fedora digital library framework we will provide mechanisms for long-term digital archiving of astronomical tables, catalogs, spectra, images and documents that facilitate data publishing for astronomers and scholarly journals
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