Herschel Publishing Rules and Guidelines


Introduction

Scientific results based on Herschel observations are de facto communicated via publications in the refereed scientific literature. This webpage provides the rules and guidelines for the publishing of such results, the list of Herschel Scientific Publications can be found elsewhere.

It is stressed upfront that including the proper acknowledgements and references and cross-references in papers is always important and authors should take all possible care to achieve this. It is also stressed that each publication based on Herschel observations should include the Target Name (if applicable), the Date(s)/OD(s) of the Observation(s) and in particular the OBSID(s) to ensure that the data can be uniquely identified. This will be of enormous help for establishing links from individual observations in the Herschel Science Archive to published papers, a service to be provided in the future.

Mandatory footnote in all Herschel papers

It has been agreed that in all papers using Herschel and/or Herschel data a mandatory footnote on the first page should be included. The footnote serves multiple purposes, including providing credit and simplifying publication tracking. The footnote is:

"Herschel is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA."

As an example, using the A&A LaTeX template this should be done using the \thanks command as illustrated here:

\title{The title of your paper\thanks{{\it Herschel} is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA.}}

In other journals the mechanics will be different but similar, however, the footnote should be included. Should the journal (e.g. Nature) not allow footnotes, the text should be placed at the beginning of the Acknowledgements. This instruction is valid for all Herschel-related publications in all journals until further notice.

Standard references to Herschel and its instruments

Reference to Herschel and its instruments should be made using the following standard references as appropriate. By means of an example:

"In the present paper we will be discussing observations performed with the ESA Herschel Space Observatory (Pilbratt et al. 2010), in particular employing Herschel's large telescope and powerful science payload to do photometry using the PACS (Poglitsch et al. 2010) and SPIRE (Griffin et al. 2010) instruments, and very high resolution spectroscopy with the HIFI (de Graauw et al. 2010) instrument."

These four references are to four papers in the A&A Special Issue, the references are (assuming the first three names should be written followed by et al., this is the case for A&A):

Pilbratt, G.L., Riedinger, J.R., Passvogel, T. et al. 2010, A&A, 518, L1
Poglitsch, A., Waelkens, C., Geis, N. et al. 2010, A&A, 518, L2
Griffin, M.J., Abergel, A., Abreu, A. et al. 2010, A&A, 518, L3
de Graauw, T., Helmich, F.P., Phillips, T.G. et al. 2010, A&A, 518, L4

Please note that A&A is using 'paper numbers' rather than 'page numbers' as references.

Please also note that you can refer to Herschel either as the "Herschel Space Observatory" or just "Herschel" (do not use all capitals), however, it is stressed that there is no acronym in use for Herschel. Please do not invent one!

Additional acknowledgements to Herschel and its instruments

Including the 'Herschel footnote' and the use of the appropriate 'standard references' is compulsory for all authors. However, there are additional possible acknowledgements, some of which may be mandatory in individual cases, and some that are to the discretion of the authors.

For papers based on guaranteed time from the instrument consortia it is compulsory to (and anybody can) acknowledge the consortia as follows:

"HIFI has been designed and built by a consortium of institutes and university departments from across Europe, Canada and the United States under the leadership of SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research, Groningen, The Netherlands and with major contributions from Germany, France and the US. Consortium members are: Canada: CSA, U.Waterloo; France: CESR, LAB, LERMA, IRAM; Germany: KOSMA, MPIfR, MPS; Ireland, NUI Maynooth; Italy: ASI, IFSI-INAF, Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri-INAF; Netherlands: SRON, TUD; Poland: CAMK, CBK; Spain: Observatorio Astronómico Nacional (IGN), Centro de Astrobiología (CSIC-INTA). Sweden: Chalmers University of Technology - MC2, RSS & GARD; Onsala Space Observatory; Swedish National Space Board, Stockholm University - Stockholm Observatory; Switzerland: ETH Zurich, FHNW; USA: Caltech, JPL, NHSC."

"PACS has been developed by a consortium of institutes led by MPE (Germany) and including UVIE (Austria); KU Leuven, CSL, IMEC (Belgium); CEA, LAM (France); MPIA (Germany); INAF-IFSI/OAA/OAP/OAT, LENS, SISSA (Italy); IAC (Spain). This development has been supported by the funding agencies BMVIT (Austria), ESA-PRODEX (Belgium), CEA/CNES (France), DLR (Germany), ASI/INAF (Italy), and CICYT/MCYT (Spain)."

"SPIRE has been developed by a consortium of institutes led by Cardiff University (UK) and including Univ. Lethbridge (Canada); NAOC (China); CEA, LAM (France); IFSI, Univ. Padua (Italy); IAC (Spain); Stockholm Observatory (Sweden); Imperial College London, RAL, UCL-MSSL, UKATC, Univ. Sussex (UK); and Caltech, JPL, NHSC, Univ. Colorado (USA). This development has been supported by national funding agencies: CSA (Canada); NAOC (China); CEA, CNES, CNRS (France); ASI (Italy); MCINN (Spain); SNSB (Sweden); STFC, UKSA (UK); and NASA (USA)."

Where appropriate, you are invited to acknowledge the use of Herschel, HCSS, HSpot and/or HIPE by:

"The Herschel spacecraft was designed, built, tested, and launched under a contract to ESA managed by the Herschel/Planck Project team by an industrial consortium under the overall responsibility of the prime contractor Thales Alenia Space (Cannes), and including Astrium (Friedrichshafen) responsible for the payload module and for system testing at spacecraft level, Thales Alenia Space (Turin) responsible for the service module, and Astrium (Toulouse) responsible for the telescope, with in excess of a hundred subcontractors."

"HCSS / HSpot / HIPE is a joint development (are joint developments) by the Herschel Science Ground Segment Consortium, consisting of ESA, the NASA Herschel Science Center, and the HIFI, PACS and SPIRE consortia."

HCSS can be referenced as follows: Riedinger, J.R. 2009, ESA Bulletin 139, 14

HIPE can be referenced as follows: Ott, S. 2010, ASP Conference Series, 434, 139

Funding support:

ESA does not provide funding support for data exploitation. Investigators receiving such support from e.g. national agencies should follow applicable rules for acknowledgements. US-based investigators receiving such support should consult the NHSC re acknowledgements.