95th Spring Meeting of the AAVSO: Writing Scientific Publications Workshop

Introduction

The AAVSO Workshop on Writing and Publishing Scientific Papers was held on May 5, 2006, during the 95th Spring Meeting of the AAVSO in Rockford, Illinois. This half-day workshop was designed to introduce amateur astronomers, students, and academic scientists from outside of astronomy to the field of astronomical scientific publication. Excellent publication quality research is being done by professional and non-professional astronomers alike, and the goal of this session was to show aspiring authors how to go from your observations to a research paper ready for the peer review process.

The workshop consisted of six talks by members of the AAVSO community, along with discussions and a set of electronic resources and reference materials (see below). The speakers and their topics were:

Session 1:

• Dr. Paula Szkody (U. Washington, & Editor of PASP):
  Why Publish? and the editorial process"
• Dr. John Percy (U. Toronto -- Erindale):
  "What and where to publish"
• David B. Williams (President, AAVSO):
  "How to write a paper: the nuts and bolts of preparing your work for publication"

Session 2:

• Dr. Arne Henden (Director, AAVSO):
  "Checking the Literature"
• Dr. Pamela Gay (Councillor, AAVSO, and Harvard U. Science Cntr.):
  "Creating effective graphics and plots"
• Aaron Price (AAVSO):
  "Creating effective poster presentations"

Presentations and guides:

• Why we publish ( pdf | ppt ) by Paula Szkody
• Checking the Literature ( pdf | ppt ) by Arne Henden
• What and Where to Publish ( pdf ) by John Percy
• General Advice for Effective Science Communication ( pdf ) by John Percy
• Illustrating Your World (pdf | ppt ) by Pamela Gay
• Creating Effective Poster Presentations ( pdf | mov | ppt ) by Aaron Price
• From submission to publication ( pdf ) by Matthew Templeton
• Guidelines for Research Papers Submitted to the JAAVSO ( pdf ) by Charles Whitney

Examples:

• The 2003 Eclipse of EE Cephei by Gerard Samolyk and Shawn Dvorak (2004; JAAVSO 33, 42)
• Photometry of OW Gem by D.H. Kaiser et al. (2002; IBVS 5347)
• Planetary Transits of the Trans-Atlantic Exoplanet Search Candidate TrES-1b by Aaron Price et al. (2005; JAAVSO 34, in press)

Journal Homepages:

• The Journal of the AAVSO
• Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific
• Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada
• Information Bulletin on Variable Stars
• Monthly Notices of the Astronomical Society of South Africa
• The Astronomical Journal
• Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
• Astronomy & Astrophysics
• Open European Journal on Variable Stars

Outside resources:

Literature search:

• NASA ADS Abstract Service -- form-based literature search
• Today's preprints on astro-ph and the astro-ph archive search
• Astronomy and Astrophysics Abstracts
• Google Scholar

Data search:

• Skyview form-based multiwavelength image search
• SIMBAD form-based object and region search
• VizieR form-based catalog search (make sure JavaScript is turned on first)
• MAST (Multimission Archive at STScI)
• HEASARC -- NASA's X-ray and Gamma-ray Astronomy Data Archive
• US National Virtual Observatory and their outreach website

General advice:

• Advice for beginning researchers by Chris Matzner (CITA, U. Toronto) -- this is geared towards Astronomy students, but has good general information for everyone starting out