Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Sat, 02/02/2019 - 19:08
I went through the list of papers (2015-2018) that reference the AID and compiled a summary of how the data were used. See attached.
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Hi Tom,
thanks for compiling this very interesting data. You made the following comment at the end of your note:
"I will also note that it was common for paper authors to reject photometric magnitudes not accompanied by uncertainties."
This is a very unfortunate development which effectively discards all visual estimates, no matter how experienced the observer. I won't mention names here, but one of my colleagues in Variable Stars South was specifically requested by a professional astronomer to monitor a particular variable. After much time and effort his visual observations were not included (not even an acknowledgement) in the resulting paper because they lacked uncertainties, despite them being in excellent agreement with CCD values and filling out the light curve between the electronic measurements.
Is this "no uncertainty, no use" policy driven by the journals or the authors?
I believe that the authors in question were referring to CCD/DSLR data, not visual estimates. That's what I meant by "photometric." Visual data were certainly used in published papers.