Information Scientists: Between Editors and Data Centers
Résumé
Since the emergence of electronic publications in the early 1990s, astronomy has played a pioneering role in the development and implementation of new capabilities and services. As a data center, the CDS contributed significantly to this evolution: a synergy between data centers and journal editors started in the 1990s with the publication of large tables and data sets in electronic form and contributed to an efficient linking of publications with existing databases like SIMBAD or NED. This collaborative work, carried out in practice by information scientists, illustrates a new role for us who now have to deal with both editor and database requirements. After a short description of the CDS, we present our peculiar responsibilities related to the publication process: ensuring, prior to publication, that the link from selected objects quoted by the authors in their papers to the SIMBAD database is correct and maintained in the long term, that the tables and their complete descriptions are accessible through VizieR, and that the data and bibliography are correctly entered in SIMBAD. The Dictionary of Nomenclature, which plays an important role in these procedures, is briefly presented. Finally, the skills we developed for these activities are shortly discussed.