Collaboration

SDSS is operated by an international collaboration of hundreds of scientists at numerous institutions around the globe. The scientific achievements of  SDSS are enabled by the technical capabilities, financial contributions, and above all, the collective scientific expertise and enthusiasm of this vibrant collaboration.

The active operational phase of the project is SDSS-V, which began collecting data in October 2020 and is expected to run through 2025. SDSS-V operates at Apache Point Observatory in the USA and at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. The first data release is anticipated to be in 2022.

The SDSS-V collaboration continues to seek new institutional partners. Policies for joining SDSS-V can be found in the SDSS-V Joining Document.

The SDSS-V collaboration’s governing body is its Advisory Council (AC), which formulates recommendations on project scope and budget to the Board of Governors of the Astrophysical Research Consortium (ARC). Critical decisions about the scientific objectives, hardware and software builds, and day-to-day operations are managed by the Central Project Office (CPO) and/or the Management Committee (MC), which includes the CPO along with the leaders of the Mappers, the instrument groups, and other infrastructure teams.

Collaboration policies that address publications and data access are developed and implemented by the SDSS-V Collaboration Council (CoCo), which has a representative from all of the full and associate institutional partners. The CoCo is chaired by the SDSS Spokesperson, who is elected by the collaboration for a 3-year term.

For more detailed information about how the SDSS collaboration operates, please see the policy documents below.

Policies

The top-level governing policy for SDSS-V is its Principles of Operation, which is descended from the Principles of Operation documents of previous SDSS generations. This document describes the scientific objectives, management structure, and basic operational policies for the survey.

types of publications are classified, and how to give credit to individuals for analysis and infrastructure work. The Publication Policy is developed and implemented by the CoCo, and approved by the AC.

The External Collaborator (EC) Policy describes the limited circumstances and procedures under which pre-release SDSS-V data can be shared outside the collaboration. The EC Policy is also developed and implemented by the CoCo, after approval from the AC.

SDSS-V has adopted a Code of Conduct as part of its commitment to providing a healthy, inclusive working environment for all of our members, regardless of identity or career stage. All collaboration members are expected to abide by these guidelines in all interactions with their colleagues, including over email and during in-person or virtual meetings.

Image Use Policy

Our Image Use Policy is that any SDSS image on the SDSS Web site may be downloaded, linked to, or otherwise used for any purpose, provided that you maintain the image credits. Unless otherwise stated, images should be credited to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We provide all images on a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC-BY). We note that:

  • Your use of the image does not imply our endorsement of any product or service
  • If the image is to be used on a Web page, we also ask as a courtesy that you provide a link back to our site at www.sdss.org.

All SDSS data released in our public data releases are considered in the public domain. Any questions about image use, along with the URL of the image in question, should be directed to the ARC Corporate Office via ARC’s Business Manager:

Alim Patten
ARC Business Manager
c/o Department of Astronomy, Box 351580
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
Phone: +1-206-616-0035
Email: alimyp@uw.edu

Acknowledging and Citing SDSS

We request that the following acknowledgement be included in any paper using data or software from SDSS-V:

Funding for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey V has been provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Participating Institutions. SDSS acknowledges support and resources from the Center for High-Performance Computing at the University of Utah. SDSS telescopes are located at Apache Point Observatory, funded by the Astrophysical Research Consortium and operated by New Mexico State University, and at Las Campanas Observatory, operated by the Carnegie Institution for Science. The SDSS web site is www.sdss.org.

SDSS is managed by the Astrophysical Research Consortium for the Participating Institutions of the SDSS Collaboration, including Caltech, The Carnegie Institution for Science, Chilean National Time Allocation Committee (CNTAC) ratified researchers, The Flatiron Institute, the Gotham Participation Group, Harvard University, Heidelberg University, The Johns Hopkins University, L’Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Leibniz-Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie (MPIA Heidelberg), The Flatiron Institute, Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterrestrische Physik (MPE), Nanjing University, National Astronomical Observatories of China (NAOC), New Mexico State University, The Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), the Stellar Astrophysics Participation Group, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, University of Arizona, University of Colorado Boulder, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Toronto, University of Utah, University of Virginia, Yale University, and Yunnan University.

A Latex version of this acknowledgment is available here.

For previous phases of SDSS, the appropriate acknowledgment(s) for the survey and data releases that were used should be included in the Acknowledgments section:

Technical Publications to cite

We also ask that these papers cite the key technical publications of SDSS-V relevant to the data or software being used. This list will be updated over time.

Overview

All SDSS-V papers should cite Kollmeier et al. (2019).

MWM / BHM

All Milky Way Mapper and Black Hole Mapper papers should cite:

LVM

All Local Volume Mapper papers should cite:

Additional papers will be added to these lists as they are published.

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