Astrophysics Data System: Difference between revisions
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This article needs to be updated. The reason given is: most content is from 2005, ignoring the updates and improvements since then. (May 2023) |
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The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS) is an online database of over 16 million astronomy and physics papers from both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources. Abstracts are available online for free for almost all articles, and fully scanned articles are available in Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) and Portable Document Format (PDF) for older articles. It was developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and is managed by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
ADS is a powerful research tool and has had a significant impact on the efficiency of astronomical research since it was launched in 1992.[1] Literature searches that previously would have taken days or weeks can now be carried out in seconds via the ADS search engine, which is custom-built for astronomical needs. Studies have found that the benefit to astronomy of the ADS is equivalent to several hundred million US dollars annually,[2][3]
Use of ADS is almost universal among astronomers worldwide, and therefore ADS usage statistics can be used to analyze global trends in astronomical research. These studies have revealed that the amount of research an astronomer carries out is related to the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of the country in which he/she is based, and that the number of astronomers in a country is proportional to the GDP of that country, so the total amount of research done in a country is proportional to the square of its GDP divided by its population.[3]
History[edit]
For many years, a growing problem in astronomical research (as in other academic disciplines) was that the number of papers published in the major astronomical journals was increasing steadily, meaning astronomers were able to read less and less of the latest research findings. During the 1980s, astronomers saw that the nascent technologies which formed the basis of the Internet could eventually be used to build an electronic indexing system of astronomical research papers which would allow astronomers to keep abreast of a much greater range of research.[4]
The first suggestion of a database of journal paper abstracts was made at a conference on Astronomy from Large Data-bases held in Garching bei München in 1987.[5][6][7][8] Initial development of an electronic system for accessing astrophysical abstracts took place during the following five years; in 1991 discussions took place on how to integrate ADS with the SIMBAD database, containing all available catalog designations for objects outside the Solar System, to create a system where astronomers could search for all the papers written about a given object.[2]
An initial version of ADS, with a database consisting of 40 papers, was created as a proof of concept in 1988. The ADS Abstract Service was announced in November 1992, [1] and was released for general use in April 1993. The ADS database was successfully connected with the SIMBAD database in the summer of 1993. The creators believed this was the first use of the Internet to allow simultaneous querying of transatlantic scientific databases. Until 1994, the service was available via proprietary network software, but it was transferred to the nascent World Wide Web early that year. The number of users of the service quadrupled in the five weeks following the introduction of the ADS web-based service.[2]
At first, the journal articles available via ADS were scanned bitmaps created from the paper journals, but from 1995 onwards, the Astrophysical Journal began to publish an on-line edition, soon followed by the other main journals such as Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. ADS provided links to these electronic editions from their first appearance. Since about 1995, the number of ADS users has doubled roughly every two years. ADS now has agreements with almost all astronomical journals, who supply abstracts. Scanned articles from as far back as the early 19th century are available via the service, which now contains over eight million documents. The service is distributed worldwide, with twelve mirror sites in twelve countries on five continents, with the database synchronized by means of weekly updates using rsync, a mirroring utility which allows updates to only the portions of the database which have changed. All updates are triggered centrally, but they initiate scripts at the mirror sites which “pull” updated data from the main ADS servers.[9]
Data in the system[edit]
Papers are indexed within the database by their bibliographic record which contains the details of the journal…
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