The h Bar

hwlau

12:52 AM

nature.com/press_releases/ncomms-oa.html

Will you pay for it if you have papers accepted there

Kyle Kanos

2:15 AM

So apparently my university has discovered that hazing is bad

user54412

4:35 AM

@hwlau That's my guess. Much of astrophysics is open-access at some level or another, and that often means the authors are charged ~ a few thousand dollars per article.

hwlau

@ChrisWhite I heard that there are some somehow independent research/ small group in astro, how do they deal with that?

the nature charge $5200+tax, it looks crazy to me

user54412

(one interesting alternative is MNRAS in Britain, which has some hybrid model that ultimately gets a good deal of funding through taxpayer dollars)

user54412

@hwlau Well, that's what grants are meant to cover ;)

user54412

Honestly, page charges are nothing compared to the construction and operating costs of telescopes, so observational astronomy shouldn't really notice these things.

user54412

Theorists' budgets might be a bit more stretched, though

hwlau

4:40 AM

Sure, there is no problem for experimentalist.

For theorists, I guess most expense are the students and probably conference travel expense

user54412

I don't think astro is particularly accessible for small, independent groups.

hwlau

I agree that is not a problem for developed country, the charge is not that high for research grants

user54412

Yeah, my anecdotal experience is that a country's per capita impact in astro has a very steep dependence on the wealth of that country

hwlau

@ChrisWhite is there are small research group getting the share of the data for analysis.

user54412

If you and your peers are struggling to make ends meet, there's no way you can be competitive in a field where others have 10 meter telescopes and a host of satellites at their disposal

user54412

4:45 AM

@hwlau there are some such agreements I suppose - usually the minor partners don't get much attention

hwlau

It seems it is hard to work in astro as a small group

user54412

Though there is a small but growing trend of trying to do things with networks of small telescopes. Certainly there isn't much a small telescope can see that hasn't already been seen with a larger one, but time-domain astronomy is a big thing now.

user54412

Basically, if you can scan a large fraction of the sky every night or thereabouts, you can notice things like new supernovae or planets transiting their stars.

hwlau

You mean they try to build the arrays of thousand telescope, or do they want to unite different exist telescope

user54412

Though if LSST is as successful as they claim it will be (I'm slightly dubious), then all those groups will be put out of business.

user54412

4:50 AM

@hwlau Usually arrays of a few to dozens of new telescopes.

user54412

Fortunately or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, the two schools I've been at have been very large players in astro, so I've never experienced the small group side of things. But even then I sense a distinct tension in that Big Groups with Famous People pretty much monopolize the best resources.

user54412

After all, for any task there is usually one telescope that can do the job better than any other (it's too hard to justify building two such telescopes), and time on those flagship instruments is precious.

user54412

So smaller groups may never get firsthand Hubble or VLA or JWST data

Physics Meta

6:25 AM

0

Q: Fishy "Community" behavior!

See this question. The question sits on a +2 -18 vote status, but has +100 bounty on it, from "Community". Digging further into it leads me to this, which seems to suggest that Community is a kind of a bot. However - If it is a bot and, 1) has 1 rep, what is the source of the bounty amount?...

Danu

9:11 AM

@ACuriousMind But what if all naturals are boring

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