Dear IPAC Staff, One of the items that fell off the All-Hands agenda from Monday 26 Feb is the concept of an IPAC Research Results Bulletin Board -- a virtual preprint rack that contains links to new research results from IPAC Scientists and Engineers. This was one of the things I wanted to institute as the incoming Deputy Head of Science Staff ("dHOSS"), and I've convinced John Stauffer and the IPAC Directors to let me give this a try. The "Bulletin Board" (BB) idea really isn't all that different from the excellent annual Greater IPAC Science Symposium (GISS; e.g. http://spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/roc/giss/2006) administered by Roc Cutri et al, and the great work Bidushi Bhattacharya has been doing with her physical preprint rack up at Keith Spaulding. But with a web-based BB (e.g. linked from Davy's IPAC Science Page at http://www.ipac.caltech.edu/Science/) lazy people like me don't even have to get out of their chairs to catch up on new IPAC research results, and it can be more current than waiting for an annual update from all of you. I'm hoping this virtual approach will make it easier for folks in Morrisroe and Keith Spaulding to have better visibility into the research we're doing as a community, and potentially, more visibility in the external community for the research we're doing as an organization. To be clear, this BB will serve both science +and+ engineering research results -- we all believe it's critical to recognize all contributions that IPAC researchers are making. Attached please find an HTML mock-up of my concept for the Bulletin Board -- you can see some admixture of my page taste and HTML skill is rather spartan. [In fact I've used the excellent work for PTI's results page contributed by Rachel Akeson as my departure point.] I would be happy to hear any and all comments on page design here...but I do believe such a BB should by brief to be effective. It would be tempting to describe this as a "preprint server", but it is my concept that we host no manuscripts directly, but instead just provide links to preprints, ADS records, and the like. [One variant you can imagine is providing abstracts as clickable-links so as not to detract from the "quick summary" aspects of the top-level BB page.] Operational Model To make this BB work I'm going to need help from all of you: I'll need you to send me your preprint info. What I think will work best is for the author (you) to send the curator (me) summary info on the new publication in a pre-packaged HTML format. For instance, here are a couple of examples of first-author and contributing-author items:
  • [19 Feb 2007] "A Spitzer Spectrum of the Exoplanet HD 189733b", C. J. Grillmair, D. Charbonneau, A. Burrows, L. Armus, J. Stauffer, V. Meadows, J. van Cleve, D. Levine 2007, to appear in ApJL
    • and
  • [25 Jan 2007] " Extending the infrared radio correlation", Boyle, B. J.; Cornwell, T. J.; Middelberg, E.; Norris, R. P.; Appleton, P. N.; Smail, Ian 2007, to appear in MNRAS.
    • are ADS and astro-ph examples of such submissions respectively (without abstract). In case you don't speak HTML, a plain-text submission giving title, authors, status, URL link, and optional abstract will be acceptable -- at least at first I can do the HTML transcription. The way I see this going is: 1) Once a week (e.g. Moday morning) I send out a reminder email calling for new submissions (i.e. I'll quickly be black-listed on all your Spam filters) 2) You'll send me the requested info on your hot new result 3) Once a week (e.g. Friday morning) I'll update the BB page/materials with new submissions (and delete submissions older than say three--six months depending on traffic). I feel compelled to make a few additional operational remarks: - Participation in the BB is completely optional -- it is important to understand that your contributing BB materials is exclusively at your discression. If you don't want to participate in the BB, please don't feel compelled or coerced. - For my own part I'll put my own stuff on the BB that is primarily refereed papers accepted for publication in a journal, and conference contributions that may or may not be published in proceedings. The general rule I would recommend is if you are comfortable listing a research contribution in your annual performance review materials, then it probably belongs on the BB. But I also want to make it clear that I will not impose policy here -- I want you to exercise your own judgement on how (and if) your work is represented on the BB. - Speaking of annual reviews, I want to assure everyone that this BB proposal is +not+ a subterfuge to collect performance review information. This is purely community service, and nothing we collect in administering the BB will bear on review activities. If the consensus is that IPAC Researchers would be more comfortable working with a BB maintainer outside the science review process, I will be only too happy to cede BB maintenance duties to others. BB Participation Incentive -- A Free Lunch! Having said BB participation is purely voluntary, it's clear that without some positive incentive this proposal would just be another activity gone fallow after a few months. To try and avoid that fate, John Stauffer had an excellent suggestion -- have BB submissions double as raffle entries! The IPAC Directors (George, Roc, Tom, Chas) have generously agreed to fund a quarterly lunch for four at the Ath for a winning BB submission to be selected at random (e.g. drawn from a hat by Mary Ellen). To be clear, the quarterly raffle winner gets to choose his/her three Ath lunch guests -- there's already a 'lunch with the Directors' series, and a lunch with one of us might not be uniformly seen as an incentive ;^). So in summary, please take this as my first BB entry solicitation, and my target date for having the first BB on-line by 1 April. I look forward to working will all of you to provide greater visibility into IPAC research to all. - Andy Boden 19 March 2007