TO: Members of the GCN Circulars list 16 Feb 99 TABLE OF CONTENTS: THANKS FOR YOUR RESPONSES SUMMARY OF RESPONSES CATAGORIZING THE RESPONSES THE "VOTING" RESULTS THE SOLUTION FALL-BACK IN CASE OF FUTURE PROBLEMS RULES AND GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSION CONTENT MISCELANEOUS COMMENTS FINAL COMMENTS THANKS FOR YOUR RESPONSES: I want to thank all the people that responded to my "call for comments" on the issue of recent content in the GCN Circulars. There were 31 respondants. Some were terse and others were very detailed; some had a single preference and others gave multiple prioritized choices. All are much appreciated and well considered. SUMMARY OF RESPONSES: As might be expected, there was a wide range of opinions about the recent content (in particular the apperance of theory-related submissions) and about the future direction of the Circulars service. They ranged from "let everything be allowed" to "nothing but observational data". Clearly, a compromise of somewhere in between is required. CATAGORIZING THE RESPONSES: I catagorized the responses into 5 groups: 1) Anything allowed in a single list (Obs-data, Predictions, & Theory-only). 2) Predictive-theory allowed in the original/single list (Obs & Predictions). 3) Predictive-theory split off into a 2nd list (using filter tokens). 4) All theory-related (only & predictive) split off into a 2nd list. 5) No theory of any kind allowed in the GCN system (only 1 list and it's observations only). These catagories are somewhat different than the choices originally given in the RFC. This is a result of the fact that the issue is more complicated than I tried to limit it too -- and justifiable so. There were a few suggestions that I had not thought of. These five catagories are a synthesis of a much more continuous set of preferences, but for the sake of coming to a conclusion I had to simplify and draw some dividing lines. THE "VOTING" RESULTS: The "voting" for the 5 catagories was: 1) 2.5 2) 14 3) 4.5 4) 4 5) 4 Note a) I realise this does not add up -- there were a couple responses that didn't fit within the 5 catagories and/or the RFC. Note b) There are partial votes as a result of multiple preferences/choices. Note c) About 60% of the votes in catagory 2 came from observers; the rest from theory people. THE SOLUTION: Based on the responses I have decided to: a) Keep a single list for the GCN Circulars (ie not split it up into multiple sub-topic lists), and b) Allow "predictive theory" submissions. This is the largest block of preferences, and is (I hope) a reasonable compromise between the end-points of the choices. However, I would like to stress, that to meet the concerns of those people in catagories 3-5, there are going to be improved rules and guidelines for what constitutes an acceptable predictive-theory submission (discussed below). I have incorporated many ideas, suggestions, and concepts of those people voting for catagories 3 & 4. In addition to the explicit voting preferences above, there are several other reasons and motivations for choosing catagory 2. 1) It is hoped that the episode of GRB990123 that started this dicussion was a one-time phenomenon. The uniqueness of the burst (ROTSE's T_zero detection, the burst's brightness, and the arrangement of galaxies) prompted/allowed/motivated speculation of the the gravitational lensing idea. It is hoped that now that the concept of lensing has been made and all the major details have been discussed, the topic need NOT be covered again for the next similar burst. 2) The ratio of "theory" to "observation" Circulars was a relatively low number (~5 out of 58 for GRB990123). While we all strive to limit the amount of e-mail we receive, a one-time cluster of ~5 extra e-mails every couple of months does not seem like all that much incovenience. 3) Not everyone has access to "experts" on all topics. It is of value for the speciallist(s) on a topic (e.g gravitation lensing) to communicate to ALL observers what is important and what is not important so that observing plans can be made with a maximum of scientific return for the minimum of effort and resources. FALL-BACK IN CASE OF FUTURE PROBLEMS: If future submissions do not follow the guidelines (see next section) and the volume of theory-related submissions gets too large (such that it diminishes the effectiveness of allowing the follow-up observing community to make, report, & coordinate its results), then a separate list (catagory 3 or 4) will be set up to handle this development. RULES AND GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSION CONTENT: 0) All the old/original rules still apply, plus these new and revised ones relating to theory submissions. See the web page for the full set of new rules (http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/gcn/gcn3_circulars.html). The overarching criteria for defining acceptable predictive-theory Circulars is to be of _immediate_ _use_ to the observer formulating his/her follow-up observing plan. 1) CONTENT: The only acceptable content for the GCN Circulars falls within four areas: a) Observations: A report of the observations made, the conditions under which they were made, the analysis methods used to reduce the data, and the conclusions to be drawn from them. As before, it is acceptable to discuss the differences between your results and another's results, however, it is not permitted to simply critique or editorialize another's data. b) Quantitative Near-Term Predictions: Theory/model-based Circulars which make predictions of developments in the burst counterpart MUST BE quantitative in nature and MUST BE near-term. Quantitative means that the prediction should have a probability (confidence level) of the likelyhood that it will happen, and it should only be made if it is going to happen in the near-term (see below for definition of near-term). Examples to guide the submitter are: "the OT will brighten in the I-band by 0.5-2 mags in the next 3-5 days"; "the probability of a repeated lensed event is less than 10% in the next 2 weeks, but if it happens it will be about 3" to the north of the current OT position"; or "to separate the X & Y models, the observations must be made in the I & R bands and should be taken hourly". Please note that the probability (c.l.) requirement is an attempt to get the predictor (submitter) to assess his/her certitude on the prediction, and thereby giving the reader a measure of the confidence of the prediction. c) Requests for Correlated or Cooperative Observations: Requests for observations to be made by others because of local bad weather or the need for longer-term monitoring, etc. A given site may get a 4-hour set of hourly sampled data, but due to weather, dawn or a setting target the observer can request/suggest that stations westward pick up the observation program. d) Future Plans: Sites can make statements about future plans for observations. An example would be "HST will image the OT plus host galaxy to X-th mag Y days from now (and the data will be made available to the public within Z hours)". 2) NEAR-TERM: The working definition near-term is 2-3 weeks. If your predicted phenomenon takes longer than 2-3 weeks (from the current epoch), then other channels exist for communication (astro-ph, Nature, GRB workshops & conferences). It should be noted that this time division is unrelated to the waveband of the predicted phenomenon. While it is true that the optical and x-ray light curves develop much faster than the radio light curve, the time frame for Circular submission still remains at 2-3 weeks. Further, since there are only a few radio instruments capable of making the critical observations (as opposed to the few dozen optical telescopes), direct communication by the person making the prediction to the appropriate persons at the radio instruments is doable (and preferred). 3) LENGHT: The length of Circular submissions should be kept to less than a page (about 40-50 lines). Circulars are brief statements of what was measured or what will happen (in the case of predictive-theory circulars). For those observational Circulars that have large data sets, it is perfectly acceptable to summarize your data, state a conclusion(s), and provide a pointer to the full data set (typically a URL). For predictive-theory Circulars, it is acceptable to summarize your predictions, assumptions, major caveats, and quantitive results in a short Circular and include a URL to a larger, and more detailed description (which includes all the assumptions, caveates, input numbers, etc). However, the Circulars are NOT to be used as an advertisement to some paper or web page. Any predictive-theory Circular submission must have the calculations done for the specific burst at hand (not some general calculation done priviously for some "typical" burst scenario). The follow-up community does not have time to absorb a full paper -- it needs to know what to look for about the current burst, and be able to know it in a short reading session. 4) URL POINTERS: In both cases (observations and predictive-theory), it is required that the pointed-to full description (e.g. URL) exist at the time the Circular is submitted. It does not serve the rest of the follow-up community if they can not read the details of your Circular until some time has passed. The GRB field is dynamic and the observer needs to know the full details of your prediction and calculation before he can make an informed decision about his observing plan. This GCN Circulars system is (and has to be) a self-policing relationship. Since the system is automated, there can be no single-point editorial filtering. If an individual goes beyond the guidelines too many times, they will likely incur the loss of respect from the GRB follow-up community. These are obvious concepts, but sometimes they need explicit statement. MISCELANEOUS: The following are some general issues about the Circulars which have come up over the months and/or were included in the RFC replies: 1) Turn-around Time: Because the intent of the GCN Circulars is to disseminate observational results (the main thrust) to the follow-up community, so that they can know what is going on and what has happened with the source, I strongly encourage the observer/submitter to submit his/her data with all possible speed. I have noticed (as have others) that some of the observational reports are being delayed by 1, 2, 3 days, even a week(!) after they were made. Some of this may be motivated by beating down the last 1 or 2 tenths of a magnitude uncertainty (to use the optical band as an example). If the result that the OT is at 23 mag comes out 2 or 3 days after the fact, then many small-telescope observers will waste their precious telescope time chasing after something that they will just get an upper limit on. The GCN Circulars are not a formal publication mechanism. As such, the standard for accuracy and veracity is not as high as Nature or ApJ (say). You are expected to be thorough and accurate, but people also understand that they will get some increase in errors with an increase in distribution speed, and they expect/accept that. A quick rough value is worth more than a fine-tuned but delayed value. 2) Corrections: If a submitter discovers a mistake in their Circular they should submit a corrected version immediately -- with an explicit statement of what is being corrected or adjusted. 3) Citability: Originally, the GCN Circulars scheme was set up with the allowance for Circulars to be citable or not (with a statement of such at the end of each submission). However, I suspect that this concept was not well founded. Out of the more than 250 Circulars so far, none have been listed as "not citable". In the future, unless explicitely stated to be non-citable, all Circulars should be assumed to be citable even if the "can be cited" tag line is not explicitly included. This will save a line or two on those Circulars still making the explicit statement. 4) Formating: The use of specialized formatting characters and commands should not be used within the Circular submissions. This includes LaTex, rich-text mark-up language, html, MSWord, etc format control specifications. Many readers do not have automated decoding of these formatting directives, so they should not be used. Further, they quite often confuse the situation (e.g. embedded LaTex). People should restrict themselves to the normal set of printing ASCII characters. And for things like exponentiation, please use techniques like: 1.2x10^-11 erg/cm2-s or 1.2x10E-11 erg/cm^2-s, etc. 5) Line Length: In addition to the number of lines per Circular, people are encouraged to keep the line length to about 70-75 characters. For the most part this is followed, except for a few instances where people compose their submissions within mailers that use proportional fonts. When people read these Circulars they almost always use fixed-spaced fonts and the lines tend to wrap significantly. I fix these in the archived copies, but in the distributed copies they can not (obviously). 6) Mailer Stuff: Please remember, not everyone's e-mail reader utiltity is MIME-complient. A few Circulars have been distributed with signiture blocks, PGP authentication blocks, HTML-ized duplicate copies, and other non-Circular message entities. Many people have their mailers set up to automatically do/include these items on all outgoing e-mail. When submitting a Circular it helps the readership if you disable or delete these items when making a submission. (It is not possible to have the GCN Circulars processing software remove these items with 100% confidence of not screwing up part or all of the main message.) FINAL COMMENTS: 1) This is not the result I expected. Please understand that even though I though the community would opt for catagory 3 or 4, I am quite willing and pleased to go with catagory 2. 2) I know this solution will not satisfy everyone. Given the large dynamic range of preferences (catagory 1 vs 5), it is impossible to meet everyone's preferences simultaneously. Hopefully, this is a reasonable compromise. I am, as always, keenly interested in hearing from the community about all aspects and developments of GCN (now and in the future). Please do not hesitate to contact me. 3) If this solution does not work out, there will always be opportunity to change it. Sincerely Scott Scott Barthelmy NASA-GSFC, Code 661, Greenbelt, MD 20771 PHONE: 301-286-3106 (work) FAX: 301-286-1684 (1st choice, -1682 2nd choice) EMAIL: scott@lheamail.gsfc.nasa.gov PAGER: 1-800-SKY-PAGE, PIN 2618712 (by phone, voice menu/instructions) PAGER: 2618712@skymail.com (by email, 240 characters max per message) WEB: http://gcn.gsfc.nasa.gov/gcn