How We Got Online

We begin with a quick history lesson. This is merely to help place into context, some of the facts and figures I will be detailing.

1991: arXiv begins.
1993: Mosaic graphical web browser puts people online, at home.
1994: Netscape Navigator is released becomes standard web browser until Microsoft launch Windows 95 with Internet Explorer built in. Browser wars ensue.
1995: NASA ADS begins online.
1998: Google begins, rise of the search engine.
2000: Dotcom bubble bursts, paves way for new generation of technologies including blogging, social networking etc.
2002: Web becomes ubiquitous in Western culture. This date is obviously only approximate.

It’s All About Numbers: ADS

The ADS receives around 3,000,000 readers a month. These are papers actually read, not including hits that result in no followed link.

Over 1,000,000 unique users every month.

Around 30,000 regular users, who access the service more than 10 times a month.

Fig 1 - The way ADS is used. Data taken from January and February 2008. Shows the things people do with articles they find on ADS.

Fig 2 - The way ADS is found. Data taken from January and February 2008. Shows the ways that users find NASA’s ADS.

It’s All About Numbers: arXiv and astro-ph

arXiv receives around 1,000,000 website hits every working day.

More than 900 papers are submitted to astro-ph every month.

Submitting your paper in the final minutes before the 4pm deadline (US Eastern Time) will increase your citation rate.

Living in the United States increases your chances of achieving this effect.

Fig 3 - Shows the way different journals have adopted astro-ph by looking at the percentage of papers from those journals which are also published on astro-ph.

Fig 4 - The characteristic way that a paper gets read. Initially papers are read on astro-ph when they first go up. After they have appeared on ADS, users tend to prefer to read the refereed article there.

Fig 5 - Typical example from Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Papers published in 2007, that were also published on astro-ph received 2.4x as many citations as those that were not. This factor is called the astro-ph Impact Factor.

Fig 6 - Variation of the astro-ph Impact Factor over time for four different journals. Note that the trend is for astro-ph to become more influential as time goes by.

Fig 7 - Impact of astro-ph on Citations for Different Journals. These data points are the averages over the past six years.

Why is astro-ph Influential?

Dietrich (2008a) propose three mechanisms for the impact of astro-ph and other online archives.

Open Access - Because the access to articles is unrestricted by any payment mechanism authors are able to read them more easily, and thus they cite them more frequently.

Early Access- Because the article appears sooner it gains both primacy and additional time in press, and is thus cited more.

Self-selection Bias - Authors preferentially tend to promote (in this case by posting to the internet) the most important and, thus, the most citable articles.

You Can Game the System

Papers appearing at the top of the astro-ph listing each day are seen by more people and thus cited more often. The last submission before the 4pm (Eastern US) deadline appears most prominently in the next mailing and will be listed first. Thus, if you time it right, you can try to place your paper near to the top of the list! The result is that some authors tend to promote their most important works and, thus, most citable articles, by placing them at prominent positions. This not a strong effect but it is also not uncommon.

Being based in the USA the submission deadline preferentially puts those authors at the top of the listing whose working hours coincide with the submission deadline. This is also only a slight effect, and according to Dietrich (2008b) it is more than cancelled out by the author placement effect described above.

In Summary

In a few years, use of astro-ph will be almost universal. The astro-ph preprint archive has had a marked affect on the way academic papers are read and cited. Statistics appear to show astro-ph having an increasing impact, probably as more people use the service more often with improved Internet access.

ADS as a global service introduces biases toward submissions at particular times of day. astro-ph does not diminish readership for publications, nor does it significantly increase use of the ADS. Journals which use astro-ph the most do not see a significantly better impact compared with those that use it less. But all journals see an impact.

Submissions purposefully made near the deadline, artificially increase citation counts but cancel out geographical bias toward North America.

References

Dietrich, J. P., 2008a, “The Importance of Being First: Position Dependent Citation Rates on arXiv:astro-ph”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Volume 120, issue 864, pp.224-228 - [Link]

Dietrich, J. P., 2008b, “Disentangling Visibility and Self-Promotion Bias in the arXiv:astro-ph Positional Citation Effect”, Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Volume 120, issue 869, pp.801-804 - [Link]

Henneken, E. et al., 2006, “Effect of E-printing on Citation Rates in Astronomy and Physics”, Journal of Electronic Publishing, vol. 9. - [Link]

Hennken, E. et al., 2008, “Use of Astronomical Literature - A Report on Usage Patterns”, eprint arXiv:0808.0103 - [Link]

Metcalfe, T. S., 2005, “The Rise and Citation Impact of astro-ph in Major Journals”, Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, vol. 37, p.555-557 - [Link]

The Universe’s second season is again, excellent. You can think of this second set of documentaries as a more in-depth follow up to the first year. Topics include dark matter, the constellations, gravity and space colonization. (Is it an Americanism or a mistake that lead them to title one episode ‘nebulas’ and not ‘nebulae’?).

The great thing about The Universe is that it targets the age group most disconnected from science. As a group, older teenagers are looking away from science and school isn’t doing enough to keep them interested. Documentaries like this engage people at home and lead them out into museums, lectures and libraries.

You could go and buy this show on Amazon, or directly from The History Channel - or you could win a copy! I have one sealed copy of The Universe Season Two to give away. More than 14 hours of spacey goodness on 5 DVDs in a rather fetching metal case.

How do you win it? Simple really - you have to sign up to Twitter and start following Orbiting Frog. Shameless ploy to get more Twitter followers? Yes… and no. Twitter is becoming quite the hub of astronomy chat and news. At the recent .Astronomy Conference, it became obvious that Twitter, and services like it, were going to be very important in astronomy in the next few years.

So on October 31st, I will pick a random follower on Twitter (no space probes allowed!). They will be sent this great DVD collection, but more importantly they, and possibly many others, will have joined the conversation.

To sign up to Twitter, visit http://twitter.com and once you have start following me (http://twitter.com/orbitingfrog). If you already follow me on Twitter, you are automatically entered - how easy was that?

While you’re on Twitter you might want to take a look at several more users that may be of interest:

• Carnival of Space
• WETI
• Planck
• Astronomy Picture of the Day
• The Jodcast
• International Year of Astronomy
• The Mars Rovers
• Mars Phoenix Lander
• .Astronomy Conference

Also there are many fellow astronomy bloggers on Twitter:

• Space Disco
• Chris Lintott
• The Daily ACK
• Will Gater
• Star Stryder
• Astronomy Blog
• Bad Astronomy

If I’m missing anyone, please comment to add your Twitter feed. Good luck to those entering, and happy Twittering.

Just wanted to point out this wonderful xkcd comic. I like that it ends (or starts, if you like) with ‘folks’. This is why I love xkcd.

xkcd - A Webcomic - Height

To do this yourself, or to expand upon and modify this script, download the workflow file here.

To set this up to run everyday, open it up in Automator. Click ‘Run’ to test that the script works (warning: it could take a minute or two to process, but this ok). You might also want to to change the folder into which the picture files will be saved. Then chose File -> Save As and change the type to iCal Alarm.

When you save the file in this way, Leopard will open up iCal and let you change the usual event options. You can select the time the script should run and the repeat cycle (I’ve set mine to repeat each day at 9 a.m.).

Alternatively, you can save this as an application and run it when you like in the normal fashion. In fact you can do quite a few things with it, I’d be interested to know what people come up with.

Tonight, July 5, look west and you’ll see a temporary “Belt of Three Stars”. Saturn, Mars and the star Regulus are sitting by Leo in a chance alignment that literally will only happen tonight. Very cool.

Thanks to the ‘What’s Up’ blog at Discovery for this tip.

Discovery News: What’s Up?: A Line of Planets

I love that this happened just down the road from where I live. Police called out to a 999 call about an unexplained object in the night sky solved the mystery straight away for their when they realised it was actually the Moon. Well worth listening to.

BBC NEWS | Wales | Police say UFO was just the Moon

The powers that be have decreed that some ereas of physic are more equal than others. The BBC has a good summary.

The skinny is that they are giving the chop to:

• Support for the Integral space telescope and the Veritas observatory.
• Bison, an observatory network pursuing solar-terrestrial physics.
• Astrogrid, which ties together astronomy datasets for research, will also lose its financial support.
• The eMerlin radio astronomy network, based on the famous Jodrell Bank Observatory near Manchester, will get an STFC contribution but will need extra resources to continue.

The STFC said discussions with stakeholders were taking place to ensure its viability. And it added that other investments, notably in the international Square Kilometre Array project led by the University of Manchester, meant Jodrell would continue to be an important hub for radio astronomy research.

Areas considered to be a high priority for the UK include work on detecting gravitational waves, and space telescopes that image the Universe in the infrared.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Physics names winners and losers

So I thought maybe you’d all like to know a little about what this new litter has to offer, and who the runt is, if there is one.

What’s Up Astronomy (Alan Dyer)

This guy covers the bulk of practical, amateur astronomy. He discusses what you can see in the night sky; he talks about planetariums; and he takes some nice photographs. This is great, practical stuff and I have already subscribed. A bit like the astronomy column in a newspaper, the What’s Up blog fills that factual, observer niche that we all want to read about once in a while. Unless we’re cosmologists.

Space Across the Pond (Chris Lintott)

I like Chris’ style and so I generally enjoy his stuff regardless of topic. He also has the knack of writing for the internet: short, snappy and to the point. I wish I could always stick to that ethos.

Chris is described in his Discovery bio as covering astronomy “as seen from Europe”, which truthfully I find a bit odd. Yes there are lots of Americans in the world, but this is the internet. Also, isn’t the European perspective really quite similar to most others when it comes to space? Astronomy is a fairly international game. I don’t read the Mars Phoenix Twitter feed for the Martian perspective. Anyway, I’m nit-picking. The blog is good and the name hardly matters.

Twisted Physics (Jennifer Ouellette)

To clarify: Jennifer is said to have a black belt in jujitsu and live with “a tall cosmologist name Sean”, so I’m not going to be very mean here am I? The posts here are a little more in-depth and ‘feature’ like than most of the others. The authors writes very well and covers interesting and unusual topics. a bit like the sort of stuff Wired would cover. I could learn to like this blog and will keep an eye on it. Its not Digg material, which is a shame. But other than Bad Astronomy, very little thoughtful stuff seems allowed to get far on Digg.

Cosmic Ray (RayVillard)

Going back to titles (I really am a pedant) this one is a pun. How do I feel about puns? I LOVE them! Cosmic RAY… get it? Ray is director of news for the Hubble Space Telescope. I’m not sure what that means, but I had thought that it would produce a Hubble new bias on his blog. It doesn’t, and this is a good sign. The blog is very readable and I’ll have to read it for a bit to see if I like it.

Next Generation (David Chandler)

Not sure what to say about this one. It is described to new visitors as being about student astronomy, which made me keen to read it. I’m a student and thus it seemed like he would be talking about the kinds of things student astrophysicists and astronomers are up to. But whilst this is true, there are also non-student related posts thrown in. Not a problem in of itself but when you start to think that this is one of six blogs that are part of the same collective, you wonder whether it is overkill. However at least half of the posts present are student-related and these are very interesting. Check out the post about Caesar’s path to Britain as a good example.

Space Disco (Dave Mosher)

This blog is written by the same guy that, I think, is producing the whole lot. This makes me think of it as a sort of editorial. As such it is more personal and I guess the word is ‘fun’. It looks perhaps at lighter topics with titles like ‘Supernovae Taste like Stawberries‘. I like the style and the content of this one and so I have subscribed.

In general I would say that they are all well-written and professionally put together. These are journalistic blogs. Perhaps it is partly for this reason that I wish they were not all separate. What I’d really like to see - and this is my principle wish for this family of blogs - is that they all combine into one big website.

I’d like to see a main page elsewhere, perhaps at a root address of /space, which presents the latest posts from all the authors in a kind of online astronomy magazine. I want a combined RSS feed and therefore organised coverage to avoid overlapping stories. With all those great writers, covering that wide-range of topics, I would subscribe unfailingly. There would also be room for an irreverent UK PhD student in amongst the posts of that magazine, if you ask me (ahem!).

So in conclusion: go and read. Try these blogs out. Ultimately they will all speak for themselves over time. They look at the outset to be of a high quality and as such do well at raising the bar for astronomy blogs once again.

Carnival of Space 61

President Nicolas Sarkozy’s well-known admiration for all things American now extends to space exploration. Speaking to the BBC, a senior official involved in French space policy said that it was time to shake up the European Space Agency and make it more like NASA by giving it a new, politically-led direction. The French take over the rotating presidency of the European Union on 1 July and are planning to make space policy a key area for reform.

Sarkozy is looking for UK support to bolster his ideas. He wants to lead Europe into space in a way that doesn’t leave it trailing the likes of Indian, China and Japan.

Personally, i think he could do it. This guy is crazy enough and arrogant enough to get it done.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | France plans revolution in space

From The Planetary Society weblog: The place: the Podkamennaya (Lower Stony) Tunguska River in central Siberia, northeast of Lake Baikal; the time: 7:14 a.m. on the morning of June 30, 1908. Within minutes the “Tunguska Event,” the largest asteroid impact in modern recorded history, was over.

100 years ago today!

Read More.

“Almost one in four secondary schools in England no longer has any specialist physics teachers, a survey suggests.”

BBC NEWS | Education | Physics teacher shortage warning

Slacker Astronomy » Carnival of Space No. 60

Black Hole Hunter is an online game. This relates to a post of mine from last week about the sounds of gravity waves. If you like listening to white noise and looking at graphs then this is the game for you! If not, I’d give it a miss. I started getting a headache after a couple of minutes.

Black Hole Hunter

Thanks to JPSmythe I have been playing with Wordle, a website that creates graphical representations of documents. Above you can see my paper on star formation in the Rho Ophiuchi region as a Wordle cloud. Below is the same document in the original LaTex format. anyone that knows the joys of LaTex will understand what all those odd words are.

I also wordled the recently influential WMAP paper, which studied the cosmic microwave background in great details:

Hubble’s famous paper on the expansion of the Universe and the nature of red shift:

Then I thought to query the astrophysical papers database for the most cited papers to see what names or keywords came up. The results can be seen here:

I also thought it would be interesting to do the popular Bad Astronomy blog (current RSS feed):

Finally here is the current word cloud for Digg Space:

PS: Can you tell I am a little bored today?

This week’s Carnival is up so get over there and get reading!

Also found this image via the Carnival which I rather liked.

From Wired, a nice, little, true story about some twelfth century monks and the crater they may have seen being formed.

June 18, 1178: English Monks Observe ‘Lunar’ Explosion

Astronomy and agriculture - yet more ways astronomy has advanced mankind without much notice. How humble astronomy can be! Also, Stuart has made a connection between IYP2008 and IYA2009.

Astronomy Blog

The startling reaction between Diet Coke and Mentos sweets, made famous in thousands of YouTube videos, finally has a scientific explanation.

If you drop a pack of Mentos into a bottle of Diet Coke, you get this huge fountain of spray and Diet Coke foam coming out,” says Tonya Coffey, a physicist at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. “This was a good project for my students to study because there was still some mystery to it.”

Experiments in a 2006 edition of the Discovery Channel programme Mythbusters suggested the chemicals responsible for the reaction are gum arabic and gelatine in the sweets, and caffeine, potassium benzoate and aspartame in the Coke. But there have been no rigorous scientific studies of the reaction until now…

ABC News: Mentos-Diet Coke Explosions Explained

Carnival of Space #58 | Universe Today

I rather like this one!

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

I am running a conference in September and I’m inviting astronomers and astronomy bloggers from anywhere! If you’re interested in how astronomy and the internet can combine to produce new and interesting tools for research and communication then this conference is for you.

Astronomy is facing a paradigm shift. The huge quantities of data that are being created by a new generation of surveys and instruments will require new ways of thinking. At the same time, an ever-more connected world is bringing astronomy to the masses via a new media, made up of blogs, podcasts, social networks and more.

Google Sky and Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope have taken astronomy into the home with stunning elegance. Data mining, robotic telescopes and virtual observatories will soon take petabytes of data to a global audience of professionals and amateurs.

Communication and networking technologies are changing science, for both researchers and the public alike. The .astronomy conference will discuss the ideas and methods emerging in this new era and the way in which they present interesting and novel opportunities for both conducting and communicating astronomy.

We have invited several notable people to speak at the conference (including fellow bloggers Chris, Stuart, Pamela, Phil and Emily) and I’m pleased to say that the confirmations have begun coming in. I will be blogging once in a while via Orbiting Frog, but mainly the news and updates will be posted on the conference webpage (RSS).

The conference will run from Monday 22nd to Wednesday 24th September 2008. It will take place at Cardiff University. To read more or to pre-register please visit our website or follow the .astronomy Twitter feed.

If, as my brother-in-law would say, you want to skip to the end: here are the pictures! First up is the first image sent back of the surface. It is black and white because that way they could send the image quickly and more easily in order to test out the lander. Phoenix has 14 colour filters and will be able to send full colour pictures later on.

Above we have a false colour image (UV and infrared filters) showing the hexagonal features of the ground in this arctic region. Below is a tall panorama showing the vast plains that are indicative of the geographical region on Mars, where Phoenix has landed.

The statement we are debating is a very general one: “Science and religion are ultimately incompatible world views”. If it works out this time, we’ll try another at some point, maybe more specific.

So if you wish to take part (or wade in), then either

• enter a comment here or
• post a blog entry on your own site and place a link in the comments

The rules are simple:

• be courteous and do not swear excessively (or at all if you can help it).
• no flaming (i.e. needless insulting etc)
• try to stick to topic

Let the debate begin!

Anyone want to offer themselves up for a ‘big’ discussion? I’ll happily host a page proffering debate titles and then individuals can write a post on their own site to support or refute, which I can index with the motion. If enough of you are up for it, I’ll start the first debate on whether science and religion are compatible world views.

Vote with your comments!

From Cardiff where I live, you can expect no less than 10 great opportunities over the course of 48 hours! Even as far north as Edinburgh there will be 9 chances. Across North America the frequency of visible transits will also be very high. So if you live in northern Europe or North America, put May 22nd and 23rd in your diary as a good time to look up!

To keep track of these sightings there are many websites to help. Heaven’s Above is a great website that details visible sightings from any location. If you have an iPhone or iPod touch you can use my own web app, LookUp to do much the same thing. If you use Twitter there are several feeds for cities around the world which are useful even if you live up to 100 miles away.

I have also created Google Earth files for tracking the ISS in real time around the Earth. This doesn’t provide viewing predictions, but it is fun to watch it come up to your location and then dash outside to see it pass overhead!

Times vary for all locations but if you’ve never tried to spot the space station then next week would be the time. It’ll be bright, it’ll be obvious and if you miss it, just go outside again an hour or so later and will probably be reappearing.

If anyone has specific requests for parts of the world not yet covered by the Twitter feeds, please email me. I have been looking to add some more to the list, and this seems like a good time.