NA49 Publication Policies

NA49 Publication Policies

last changed 17 June 96
approved 10 October 96

1. CONFIDENTIALITY:
Members of the Collaboration should exercise caution and good judgement when discussing experimental results with individuals outside the Collaboration before the results have been published (i.e., presented publicly in a seminar or conference or submitted for publication in a scientific journal). These results should clearly be labeled "NA49 Preliminary". When individuals outside the Collaboration are consulted for advice on the analysis or interpretation of the data, those individuals should be asked to respect the confidentiality of the data. Members of the Collaboration should not issue press releases or call press conferences without the approval of the Spokesperson.

2. SPEAKERS:
The Spokesperson will coordinate the distribution of talks with the help of the Steering Committee, the Operations and Innovations Committee, and the Council. He will strive to distribute speaking invitations received by the Collaboration on the bases of the suitability of the speaker to the topic and an equitable distribution of talks to individuals and institutions with appropriate consideration of regional distinctions. As an aid to this end, the Spokesperson will designate someone to maintain a record of all talks; thus members of the Collaboration who receive personal invitations to give talks should inform this person.

3. CONFERENCES:
Abstracts for conferences, technical as well as physics, should be approved by the Spokesperson. In addition, members of the Collaboration should not present unpublished experimental results in conferences unless (a) the data have been previously made available to the Collaboration giving details of the analysis, results, and consistency with other data, and (b) a rehearsal had been held in front of several members of the Collaboration, including a Council member and, if possible, the Spokesperson. In particular circumstances the Spokesperson may waive both these requirements. Papers for conference proceedings should be made available to the Collaboration before submission.

4. PAPERS:
A paper containing NA49 data should not be submitted to a scientific journal until (a) the data have been previously made available to the Collaboration giving details of the analysis and results and (b) a not-far-from-final draft of the paper has been discussed at a general meeting, and (c) the final draft has been made available. After the discussion of the not-far-from-final draft, an ad hoc committee may be appointed by the Spokesperson to facilitate the preparation and submission of the final draft. This committee would consist of the principal authors and one or more individuals not directly working on the analysis. It would be empowered to adjudicate disagreements on details of the paper. Such a committee should also be appointed for technical papers.

5. AUTHORSHIP:
The Spokesperson will designate someone to maintain the Collaboration List. However, for each publication the Council member from each institution will decide on the author list from that institution.

For general guidelines, the authors of papers will be those collaborators who have contributed to the taking or analysis of the data reported in the paper and who have been Collaboration members for six months or more. Normally individuals are dropped as authors one year after they leave the Collaboration; however, individuals who have made special contributions to a given topic, such as hardware or software or analysis, should be retained on the author list of papers for which their work is relevant. Collaborators who have worked on the installation of new equipment but have left the Collaboration prior to the taking of data will be included on the initial papers of the Collaboration using that equipment. Technical papers need only list as authors those individuals who contributed to that project, but the 'NA49 Collaboration' should be acknowledged.

The authors of papers will be listed in alphabetical order, preceded or followed by the phrase 'NA49 Collaboration'. Papers which result from student's theses should be so indicated by appropriate footnotes. Papers for conference proceedings are normally submitted in the speaker's name, plus other major contributors if appropriate, plus the other NA49 authors. The other NA49 authors may be abbreviated to 'NA49 Collaboration' only if space is limited.

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