MWL campaign on Mrk 421 (Jan-May 2009):
Roadmap for the data analysis, interpretation and publication
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Now that the observations have been already performed, we need to work towards the analysis and the interpretation of those observations. This was a long campaign with a very good multi-frequency coverage; we collected an excellent data set which will be the prime matter to address several topics related to the particle accleration and energy radiation in Mrk421 (and High Peak BL Lacs in general). Naturally, most of those studies will turn into scientific publications.
The steps we want to undertake are 1) data reduction and submission, 2) Interpretation of the reduced data and 3) Publication. In the paragraphs below we expand somewhat those steps:
1 - Data reduction and submission
The different groups will analyze the data from the observations, and will produce files with the format described in the Data format web page. Note that standarizing the format for all the reduced data from the different instruments has several advantages:
1) We facilitate the combined analysis of data sets coming from different instruments.
2) We make sure that the files contain all the relevant information necessary for the proper understanding of the data reduction and results.
3) We make sure that different versions of the data reduction (due to improvements or bug corrections) are properly tagged, which will avoid confusion at the time of interpreting the results.
The only disadvante is the time that the individual analyzers need to spend to make a script/program that converts their reduced data to the specified data format. Note however that this a one-time job; once done (at the beginning), then it is just a matter of running such script/program. I have some experience doing scripts to automatize procedures; I can offer help to those who might need it.
The collaborations or proposal PIs are the responsibles for the data reduction and the reliability (best efforts) of the results. Yet constructive feedback from the other groups is always encouraged; past experience shows that critic evaluation of the results by other groups can point to bugs that later on can be corrected, hence improving the reliability of the results.
The campaign finished on May 31th and you are probably already working on the reduction of that data. We'll be organizing several (EVO) meetings where the different groups can report on their respective data analysis. This will allow the participants of the campaign to have a good overall picture of all the individual instrument results. The pdf/ppt files from this meeting will be archived and made available to the others for future references. Such meeting will occur on one of the following days July 31st OR August 3rd OR August 4th . The date of the meeting will be fixed by the 3rd week of July. The agenda containing the actual reports from the groups/instruments is located here. Note that the agenda containing the reports is pass-protected. You will get the login/pass after agreement of the data policy requirements specified here .
2 - Interpretation of the reduced data
All groups who participated in the campaign and agree (sign) the Data Policy agreement will have access to all the observational (reduced) data from this campaign, and thus will be able to participate (if they wished) in the physical interpretation of the overall data set. The data will be accessible through the Data Access web page.
We'll organize several (roughly biweekly) virtual (EVO) meetings to discuss the results from the different people/groups contributing to the interpretation of the data. The access to the EVO meeting is restricted; the password is the same used for the protected web pages containing the reduced data. The reports (pdf/ppt) from these meetings will be archived and made available to all the participants.
3 - Publication of the results
One or more MW publications could be produced (depending on the results found). The first MW publication will provide a rather straighforward (little bias or high concensus among MW campaign participants) interpretation of the broad-band observational results. Additional MW publications could be done from a different (perhaps more biased) perspective, or could address additional topics using (or not) a more extended set of the observational results, which should probably have been published in the single instrument publications.
The author list in these publications will be a list of the people who bring data which are used in the MWL publication, as well as people contributing to the physical interpretation of the results. Participants bringing data that are not used in the publication, will not be part of the author list.
Campaign announcement and development
Broad band observations performed during the campaign
Quick and dirty analysis of some of the data taken during the campaign