SCOPE

The Journal of Astronomical Data (JAD, founded in 1995) is an Open Access journal that aims at complementing existing data banks, data archives and supplement series of other journals by publishing astronomical data in machine-readable form (on CD-ROM, DVD or internet) for use in further research, and for purposes of archiving.

To this end, JAD publishes:

• observational datasets, such as:
  • CCD-images of galaxies, nebulae, globular clusters or stellar fields in compressed FITS format
  • spectra of stars, galaxies, etc. in FITS format, possibly supplemented with calibrated spectra as ASCII tables
  • photometric measurements with associated calibration data radio maps of the sky
  • magnetograms of the Sun sunspot images, etc.
  • data from theoretical research, such as stellar-atmosphere models
• video (MPEG, AVI) files from simulations and models
• historical data, e.g. collections covering very long time baselines
• reduction software and computer code
• complete descriptions and CAD-based designs of new instruments
• Ph.D. theses with extensive data tables
• catalogues
• conference proceedings
• regular papers if accompanied by the data on which they are based

Data already permanently available in machine-readable form at established data banks are not considered for publication in the journal.

REFEREEING and COPYRIGHT

• All papers are submitted to at least one referee.
• All published material is copyright protected and all rights are reserved, unless stated otherwise. The Publisher adopted the policy that authors retain their copyright (or, in other cases, the institute under which jurisdiction the author has collected the data). This principle leaves full freedom for authors to distribute their work in other ways without needing consent from a third party. The author(s) retains the right to place a copy of the paper on their own Web page, or any other non-commercial server, provided that reference is made to the Journal where the paper is published.

SUBMISSION OF PAPERS

• Papers are written with LaTeX using the common article class procedure and can be submitted electronically to one of the Editors.
• Contributions describe the astronomical background and motive for the scientific work done, a complete description of the data-collecting process, an assessment of the accuracy of the data, and the data proper.
• There are no publication charges as long as the amount of submitted data can be handled by the Publisher within the technical limits of the Journal.

SUBSCRIPTION

• JAD appears annually - that is, one volume per year - on one or more physical data carriers (CD-ROM or DVD). The descriptive part of the published manuscripts is reprinted on paper in the form of Proceedings volumes.
• As JAD is an Open Access journal, there are no subscription fees.

THE JOURNAL OF ASTRONOMICAL DATA (JAD)

• Editors: Chris Sterken (csterken@vub.ac.be) and Hilmar Duerbeck (hilmar@uni-muenster.de)
• Publisher: C. Sterken, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussel. tel. 00 32 26293469 /3470 fax 00 32 26293174