Omar Laurino joins panel for AAS splinter meeting “Astrophysics Code Sharing?”

Omar Laurino (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) has joined the panel for the ASCL-sponsored splinter meeting “Astrophysics Code Sharing?” at the upcoming AAS meeting in Long Beach. The topic of his short presentation is What do we want to accomplish?

Session date/time/location:
Wednesday, January 9
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Regency Ballroom D (Downtown Hyatt Long Beach)

Peter Teuben (Astronomy Department, UMD) will discuss the results of sessions on code release and discoverability from earlier conferences; he will also moderate the discussion. Robert Hanisch (STScI/VAO) will talk on Integrity in the publication process and Bruce Berriman (IPAC, Caltech) will cover Code repositories in other disciplines. ASCL editor Alice Allen will share a little information about (surprise!) the ASCL. The floor will be open for discussion and sharing after the five-minute presentations. And we’ll have glow-in-the-dark pencils to give away, too!

ASCL poster at AAS

The ASCL will have a poster at AAS on Tuesday, January 8; it is poster 240.01, one of the Computation, Data Handling, and Image Analysis posters, and is titled Using the Astrophysics Source Code Library. Editor Alice Allen will be at the poster handing out glow in the dark pencils. Please stop by to pick one (or a dozen) up!

A preferred reference method seems to be evolving

Looking recently at references to code entries, I see most are in the format:

author, year,

ascl ID

For example: Barnes, J. E., 2011, Astrophysics Source Code Library, record ascl:1102.027

Using the entire ascl ID (ascl:xxxx.xxx) in the reference enables ADS to more easily pick up the citation. It may be helpful to the reader to include the name of the code as well:

Barnes, J. E., 2011, ZENO, Astrophysics Source Code Library, record ascl:1102.027

The ascl ID number can be used to provide a link to a particular entry. For the example above, typing ascl.net/1102.027 into your browser brings up the entry for the code ZENO.

Astrophysics Code Sharing?

Astrophysics Code Sharing? is the title of a splinter meeting the ASCL is sponsoring at the upcoming AAS meeting in Long Beach. The session date/time/location are:

Wednesday, January 9
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Regency Ballroom D (Downtown Hyatt Long Beach)

Peter Teuben (Astronomy Department, University of Maryland) will chair the discussion. Some of the subjects to be covered in the presentations highlight recent developments:

Astrophysics Source Code Library (ASCL)
Results of recent discussion about code release and discoverability: eScience meeting (Chicago, Oct 2012), ADASS conference (Urbana-Champaign, Nov 2012)
Integrity in the publication process
Code repositories in other disciplines

We invite participants to suggest other short topics to present by contacting the organizers at editor@ascl.net. The panelists presenting the topics listed above include Bruce Berriman (IPAC, Caltech), Robert J. Hanisch (STScI/VAO), and Alice Allen (ASCL).

After short presentations on the state of astronomical software, the floor will be opened for discussion on issues relating to the discoverability of codes and transparency of numerical and computational research methods.

Resources used or available at ADASS

We had a display table at ADASS in addition to participating in a Birds of a Feather (BoF) session and passed out a few documents, showed a few slides, had a couple glasses of wine… Cannot share the wine, but can share some of the files:

ASCL flyer (PDF)
BoF talking points handout (.docx)
BoF discussion questions presentation (.pptx)
Request for suggestions for improving the ASCL (.pptx)
Papers of possible interest to astronomical software users (.docx) (also available online)

ADS BibTeX records for citing ASCL entries

ADS is currently generating incorrect BibTeX records for citations to code entries in the ASCL. This will be fixed, but in the meantime, here’s an example of what is being generated and how to fix it, courtesy of Mark Taylor and Alberto Accomazzi.

Hitting the “Bibtex entry for this abstract” button on the ADS page for the ASCL Sherpa entry gives:

@ARTICLE{2011ascl.soft07005F,
author = {{Freeman}, P. and {Nguyen}, D. and {Doe}, S. and {Siemiginowska}, A.
},
title = “{Sherpa: CIAO Modeling and Fitting Package}”,
journal = {Astrophysics Source Code Library},
year = 2011,
month = jul,
pages = {7005},
adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011ascl.soft07005F},
adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

The identifier that should be in “pages” is “1107.005” as ASCL IDs are all of the form yymm.nnn. However, a better Bibtex entry format is:

@ARTICLE{2011ascl.soft07005F,
author = {{Freeman}, P. and {Nguyen}, D. and {Doe}, S. and {Siemiginowska}, A.
},
title = “{Sherpa: CIAO Modeling and Fitting Package}”,
journal = {Astrophysics Source Code Library},
year = 2011,
month = jul,
eprint = {ascl:1107.005},
adsurl = {http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2011ascl.soft07005F},
adsnote = {Provided by the SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System}
}

Note the removal of “page” and the addition of the “eprint” field.

After running LaTeX and BibTeX on it, it should generate an entry in the .bbl file that looks like this:

bibitem[{{Freeman et al.}(2011)]{2011ascl.soft07005F}
{Freeman}, P., {Nguyen}, D., {Doe}, S., and {Siemiginowska}, A. 2011
Astrophysics Source Code Library, eprint{ascl:1107.005}

My thanks to Dr. Accomazzi and Dr. Taylor for their work on this!

Two new members join the Advisory Committee

Keith Shortridge at the Australian Astronomical Observatory and Mark Taylor at the University of Bristol (UK) have graciously agreed to serve on the ASCL’s Advisory Committee.

Dr. Shortridge has written data reduction and data acquisition software throughout his career. He has an increasing interest in the way software is developed and in communication in the astronomical software field, and is associated with the AstroShare project. He wrote the Figaro data reduction system for Palomar early in his career, and his software AAOGlimpse was presented at the XXI ADASS conference.

Dr. Taylor has been writing astronomical software since 1998. His work has focused on processing catalogs of astronomical objects (galaxies and stars), particularly in the context of the emerging Virtual Observatory. He has worked on Starlink, AstroGrid, Euro-VOTech and the German Astrophysical Virtual Observatory, and is the author of several widely-used tools, including the interactive graphical viewer and tabular data editor TOPCAT.

ASCL at ADASS

ASCL has a display table at ADASS XXII; below is the short presentation we are running at the table.

ADASS Birds of a Feather session

Several of the ASCL’s Advisory Committee are panelists for a Birds of a Feather session that seeks answers to the following questions:

How do we ensure code release is recognized as an essential part of assuring reproducibility of research?

How can the community change the culture so developers will release their programs?

What can we do to ensure code authors receive credit for writing and releasing their software, and encourage them to release it even if it’s “messy” code?

How do we reduce expectations of support when a developer does not wish to (or cannot) take on that role after program release?

What role might journal publishers and funding agencies have in furthering code release, and how can the community influence them to take on that role?

How can universities be convinced to change policies which prohibit software publication?

Can funding agencies and publishers encourage documentation of programs, and if so, how?

Got answers? Ideas? Comments? Please share!