[fitsbits] REFERENC keyword, etc.

[William Thompson]

But even persistent URLs aren't guaranteed to still exist 20 years from now, 
while published literature is expected to remain around for centuries.

I'm all for including a pointer to an informational web page (i.e. INFO_URL), 
but this should be backed up with links to the published literature.

Bill


On 07/20/15 18:55, Joe Hourcle wrote:
>
>
> On Mon, 20 Jul 2015, William Thompson wrote:
>
>> Folks:
>>
>> In our community we've been discussing the need for including information in
>> the FITS header about the instrument that produced the data.  The FITS
>> standard describes the keyword REFERENC which is described as being where the
>> data are published.  We were thinking of using this or a similar keyword to
>> point to the instrument paper.  However, the description of REFERENC doesn't
>> appear to be compatible with this usage.  Instead, it appears to be oriented
>> towards a data rights model where specific observations are considered to
>> belong to a group of researchers until the data are published.  That's not
>> generally the case in our field.
>
> I had brought up REFERENC for this use a while back, and I was told that
> it's from the Vizier project, where when they extracted the data from the
> arcticles, and in the resulting FITS files, they put a reference back to
> the paper (in this case, a bibcode).
>
>
>> One keyword that we've recently (tentatively) adopted is INFO_URL to point to
>> a website where information about the instrument can be found.  This can
>> include copies of the instrument paper(s), user guides, software manuals,
>> observer's logs, and the like.  However, one must always consider URLs as
>> ultimately ephemeral, and a standard way to point to the published literature,
>> which is considered to be more permanent, is highly desired.  I'm curious to
>> know how other groups have tackled this problem.
>>
>> One possible set of keywords which have occurred to me are:
>>
>> INS_REF Instrument description paper
>> CAL_REF Instrument calibration paper
>>
>> The instrument calibration paper tends to come well after the instrument
>> description paper.  I haven't discussed these keywords yet with our teams, but
>> they seem sensible.  As with REFERENCE, these should either contain the ADS
>> bibcode, or the DOI.
>>
>> I'm interested to know what you think,
>
>
> I've been trying to get access to mint DOIs through the EOSDIS here at Goddard
> -- I likely need to ping them again, as I was told they'd have to discuss it
> with some other people.
>
> As an alternative to DOIs, we could also use PURLs, which are 'persistent
> URLs'.  Basically, you have a DSN name that's used to redirect people, so that
> you only have to make sure that one site stays up.  Should the site hosting the
> documentation go down, you adjust the record at the PURL site to redirect to the
> new location.
>
> Personally, I'm against hard-linking to the instrument & calibration papers,
> because they're static -- if you linked to a paper describing the original EIT
> calibration, it wouldn't contain any information about the degredation that
> wasn't detected until years later.  I would prefer to see a 'INFO_URL' pointing
> to a website that the PI team could update.  They could then provide up-to-date
> links to information about calibration, the user's guide, etc.
>
> For the solar community, I've set up 'http://data.virtualsolar.org/' for PURLs.
> It was set up as a stop-gap until I can mint DOIs.*
>
> ...
>
>
> If you're planning for the long term, as our community tends to define headers
> early in the mission, and then avoid changing them, I'd actually like to see
> there be slightly different PURLs if there are different types of data
> released.  (eg, if there are multiple detectors, different observing modes, or
> different types of processing applied).  This way, we can more easily
> differentiate between them.
>
> We could also use these PURLs to serve metadata about the larger collection of
> data.  See "Achieving human and machine accessibility of cited data in scholarly
> publications", which discusses this plus some recommendations on
> cross-discipline standards:
>
>      https://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.1
>
> ...
>
> For more on the arguments against linking to static documents, see the handout
> from the poster "Linking Articles to Data":
>
>      http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13802
>
>
> -Joe
>
>
> * and currently, only has one entry:
>
>      http://data.virtualsolar.org/soho.uvcs
>
>
> -----
> Joe Hourcle
> Programmer/Analyst
> Solar Data Analysis Center
> Goddard Space Flight Center
>
>

-- 
William Thompson
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Code 671
Greenbelt, MD  20771
USA

301-286-2040
William.T.Thompson at nasa.gov