Recommended Criteria for ALFALFA Science Projects Authorship

0.0     A member of the ALFALFA collaboration who wishes to work on a specific project that relies on ALFALFA data should inform the Oversight Committee (OC). A description of the project scientific goals, instruments to be used and extent of use of ALFALFA data should be indicated, as well as a timetable for completion of the project. The plan of work will be posted on the ALFALFA website and other ALFALFA group members informed. Any member of the group interested in the project should feel free to contact the provisional project leader and propose to join, provided that a useful contribution can be made within the given timetable. The ultimate constitution of the team is however up to the project leader. Progress reports will be required; continuation of project leadership will be linked to consistency with the proposed schedule. Posted projects, especially PhD thesis projects, will thus be "protected" within the collaboration, and external users of the data will be advised of the ongoing internal activities of the group.

0.1     In case of partial conflict of interests between different proposed projects, differences will be preferentially resolved amicably by team members. The OC can act as arbitrator if required.

0.2     In preparation of publication of ALFALFA and ALFALFA-related results by group members, an authorship list should be sent to the OC. The OC may thus advise or recommend modifications, for increased fairness.

0.3     One category of group members should be considered potential co-authors on all ALFALFA and ALFALFA-related results: that of individuals who :

(a) acted for more than 100 hours of telescope time as "designated observers", within the last year
or

(b) processed and inspected more than 100 hours of telescope time worth of data, within the last year
or

(c) made major contributions to the HI data processing and management software.

0.4     In the publication of strictly ALFALFA HI data, results or catalogs, the authorship list will include those in 0.3. Inclusion of any others is up to the consideration of the team leader.

0.5     For a paper that uses publicly posted but scientifically unprocessed data, such as source lists, level 1 or level 2 data sets, the same considerations described above apply, if the initiators are ALFALFA collaboration members.

0.6     For a paper that uses published ALFALFA data, the usual criteria of professional courtesy apply.

0.7     For all publications, an effort should be made to protect the projects led by PhD students, and to emphasize their contributions. For the papers which are a substantive part of students' theses, "dilution" of credit should be minimized, i.e. members of the collaboration who didn't make a substantive contribution to that specific project should be encouraged to exclude themselves from authorship.

0.8     "Surprise" or "unexpected" discovery reports: "Hot" sources will occasionally be found during various stages of data inspection. The discoverer will have the option of first authorship after clearance with the OC, whether the finding is the result of blind luck or planned search. Discovery papers of "hot" sources found through automated signal identification algorithms will be led by authors selected with a "merit" criterion that involves level of commitment to observations, data processing, software development and other overall contributions to the survey.