Lasair publication and credit policy

The Lasair project is funded within LSST:UK Phase B and C awards to deliver a working platform for the scientific exploitation of time domain data from the Rubin Observatory. As part of this development we exploit the Zwicky Transient Facility data stream. Access to the ZTF and Rubin data is fully public, world-wide and there is no restriction to the data access and scientific use, nor any formal further requirement. Science users in the UK, within the Rubin community (i.e. data rights holders) and world-wide can access scientific data and publish papers based on the results with no additional requirement or permission from the Lasair team. We do request proper acknowledgement, citations and credit as is standard good practice in scientific publishing.

General papers that use the Lasair platform, interface, tools and database

No co-authorship of the Lasair builder team is required. Users should cite the following paper and add the acknowledgement below to their paper :

Lasair: The Transient Alert Broker for LSST:UK, K. W. Smith, R. D. Williams et. al., Research Notes AAS, 3,26 (2019).

Lasair is supported by the UKRI Science and Technology Facilities Council and is a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh (grant ST/N002512/1) and Queen’s University Belfast (grant ST/N002520/1) within the LSST:UK Science Consortium

TO DO : UPDATE THE ABOVE WITH NEW PHASE C GRANT NUMBERS

Lasair system papers written by, or with, the Lasair team

Papers that have been written by the Lasair team, such as those describing the software, design, infrastructure etc will be defined as Lasair system papers. These core papers will offer co-authorship to the team of Lasair Builders, which consists of

G. Francis
A. Lawrence
R. Williams
K. W. Smith
D. R. Young
S. J. Smartt

Other individuals who conceive and write papers that are based on developing the Lasair infrastructure and provision(e.g. filters, features, classification) and for whom interaction with the Lasair team is central to the paper should offer co-authorship to the Lasair Builder list.

The Lasair Builders request that a period of at least 2 weeks should be given between the circulation of the draft for comment and co-authorship and submission.

The Lasair Builders acknowledge that they must explicitly agree to co-authorship and their name appearing on the paper. If any of the Builders do not respond explicitly by the deadline requested, then the author of the paper should progress without those co-author names i.e. the Lasair policy is one of explicitly opting in and Builders must abide by this.

Science papers written with the assistance of the Lasair team

Generally, there is no need for science papers to include the Lasair builder team if the users have simply exploited the Lasair platform. The Lasair team are also happy to advise, help and assist users in using Lasair to enable scientific exploitation of the LSST and ZTF data. There is no need for co-authorship in this case. Although papers should cite the Lasair definition paper(s) listed above and include an acknowledgement.

If users have significant interaction with the Lasair team and new features and new functionality are developed or significant new code (e.g. SQL or python queries) are produced by the Lasair team then we encourage normal scientific collaboration practice to ensue. In that case, co-authorship requests should be extended to the Lasair Builder team. It may be more appropriate that only one or two of the builder team co-author the paper, in which case usual authorship judgement should be applied.

If users develop filters and searches themselves with little interaction with the Lasair team (based on the documentation) then no co-authorship of Lasair Builders is needed. If users develop filters and wish to integrate them into the Lasair workflow, then the Lasair team would be happy to discuss and facilitate. Authorship on papers arising can be made on a case by case basis.

Process for decision making and arbitration

The above policies contain some grey areas and it may not always be clear if authorship should be extended to the Lasair team. In this case we suggest that prospective co-authors send their papers and description of the work (and initial co-author proposal, if appropriate) to both S. Smartt and A. Lawrence who will suggest a way forward. Smartt and Lawrence’s suggestion is non-binding and will act as advice. Ultimately it is up to the paper authors to decide.

Adler interaction and Lasair contribution

As Adler will build on the Lasair expertise, code and infrastructure, any Adler system papers that describe that (i.e. in a similar way to Lasair: The Transient Alert Broker for LSST:UK, K. W. Smith, R. D. Williams et. al., Research Notes AAS, 3,26 2019) should offer co-authorship to the Lasair team, with the names outlined above.

Scientific use of Adler by either the Adler team or any community scientist will not require any co-authorship of the Lasair builder team (unless there is normal scientific interaction and collaboration to justify such co-authorship).