Best practices for data publication in the astronomical literature
Open accessAbstract
We present an overview of best practices for publishing data in astronomy and astrophysics journals. These recommendations are intended as a reference for authors to help prepare and publish data in a way that will better represent and support science results, enable better data sharing, improve reproducibility, and enhance the reusability of data. Observance of these guidelines will also help to streamline the extraction, preservation, integration and cross-linking of valuable data from astrophysics literature into major astronomical databases, and consequently facilitate new modes of science discovery that will better exploit the vast quantities of panchromatic and multidimensional data associated with the literature. We encourage authors, journal editors, referees, and publishers to implement the best practices reviewed here, as well as related recommendations from international astronomical organizations such as the International Astronomical Union for publication of nomenclature, data, and metadata. A convenient Checklist of Recommendations for Publishing Data in the Literature (Appendix A) is included for authors to consult before the submission of the final version of their journal articles and associated data files. We recommend that publishers of journals in astronomy and astrophysics incorporate a link to this document in their Instructions to Authors.
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FAIR principles primarily apply once data enters the public domain.
“Alignment with Open Science Goals: While the community strongly moves towards Open Science and FAIR data principles (Wilkinson et al., 2016; Chen et al., 2022), facilitated by public archives (Green et al., 2024), these principles primarily apply once data enters the public domain.”
From A high-throughput AES-GCM implementation on GPUs for secure, policy-based access to massive astronomical catalogs (2026) · cites this paper as Chen et al., 2022
The Introduction (p. 2) says the paper’s data-publication recommendations reflect FAIR principles, and the Data Archiving and Access section (p. 10) addresses making published data available. But the paper does not say FAIR principles primarily apply once data is public; its Summary (p. 13) expressly recommends related practices during preparation, submission, and review before publication. (LLM, conf=0.84)
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The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship
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Lemes-Perera, S., R. Alarcon, M., Caballero-Gil, P., & Serra-Ricart, M. (2026) · Astronomy and Computing · doi:10.1016/j.ascom.2026.101153 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
- Authors
- Chen, T. X., Schmitz, M., Mazzarella, J. M., Wu, X., van Eyken, J. C., Accomazzi, A., Akeson, R. L., Allen, M., Beaton, R., Berriman, G. B., Boyle, A. W., Brouty, M., Chan, B. H. P., Christiansen, J. L., Ciardi, D. R., Cook, D., D’Abrusco, R., Ebert, R., Frayer, C., Fulton, B. J., Gelino, C., Helou, G., Henderson, C. B., Howell, J., Kim, J., Landais, G., Lo, T., Loup, C., Madore, B., Monari, G., Muench, A., Oberto, A., Ocvirk, P., Peek, J. E. G., Perret, E., Pevunova, O., Ramirez, S. V., Rebull, L., Shemmer, O., Smale, A., Tam, R., Terek, S., Van Orsow, D., Vannier, P., & Wang, S.-Y.
- Affiliations
- Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg (FR)
- ORCID
- Chen, Tracy X.
- Schmitz, Marion
- Mazzarella, Joseph M.
- Wu, Xiuqin
- van Eyken, Julian C.
- Accomazzi, Alberto
- Akeson, Rachel L.
- Allen, Mark
- Beaton, Rachael
- Berriman, G. Bruce
- Boyle, Andrew W.
- Brouty, Marianne
- Christiansen, Jessie L.
- Ciardi, David R.
- Cook, David
- D’Abrusco, Raffaele
- Ebert, Rick
- Fulton, Benjamin J.
- Gelino, Christopher
- Helou, George
- Henderson, Calen B.
- Howell, Justin
- Kim, Joyce
- Landais, Gilles
- Madore, Barry
- Monari, Giacomo
- Muench, August
- Oberto, Anaïs
- Ocvirk, Pierre
- Peek, Joshua E. G.
- Perret, Emmanuelle
- Rebull, Luisa
- Shemmer, Ohad
- Smale, Alan
- Van Orsow, Doug
- Venue
- The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series
- Publisher
- American Astronomical Society
- Published
- 2022-05-01
- Volume
- 260
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 5
- ISSN
- 0067-0049 (ISSN-L)
- 1538-4365
- OpenAlex
- W3168409224
- Cited by
- 20
- References
- 1
- Citations by year
- 2026: 8 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 2 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 3
- FWCI
- 3.22
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- HAL (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) (cc-by)
- Funders
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- California Institute of Technology
- Arizona State University
- State Key Laboratory of Automotive Simulation and Control
- Stanford Bio-X
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Information Systems › Research Data Management Practices
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Scientific Computing and Data Management
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Instrumentation › Astronomy and Astrophysical Research
- Keywords
- data publication, astronomical literature, data sharing, reproducibility, data reusability, metadata, astronomical databases, data preservation, publication guidelines, International Astronomical Union
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