ASCL News
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Judy Schmidt, our designer/developer, and I have a new paper, "Looking before Leaping: Creating a Software Registry," in the Journal of Open Research Software. The article is open access and can be found here: http://doi.org/10.5334/jors.bv
When I started work on the ASCL in 2010, I wanted to understand why the original ASCL -- started in 1999 -- and other previous similar resources had not reached critical mass. I looked at these resources, what they offered, and how they were structured, and for some of them, talked with the people who had started them, to see what I could learn from their experiences. In addition, Robert Nemiroff and I have had many conversations about the early days of the ASCL, and I also talked with researchers who used some of these services. The lessons from this look back has informed our work on the ASCL. My background in change management has also been helpful in determining the ASCL's path forward. In the paper, we share not only some of what was learned, but also specific steps we've taken, why we've taken them, how the ASCL has changed over time, and some of our future plans.
The first version of this paper was accepted for the 2nd Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences (WSSSPE2), which took place in New Orleans in November 2014, and was later revised for publication.
WSSSPE2 blog post
3rd Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences -
Earlier this month, Robert Hanisch stepped down as an adviser on the ASCL's Advisory Committee (AC); we are grateful for his service to the ASCL and thank him for his assistance.
Thomas Robitaille from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) has joined the AC. He brings with him a wealth of experience as a software author, having developed Hyperion and APLpy; he's also work on Glue and AstroPy and other astronomy software. We are delighted to have his input!
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Have you found an error in an ASCL entry?
Is there a paper using your code you'd like to add? Would you like to specify right in an ASCL entry how your code should be cited?We have added a "Suggest a change or addition" link to every code entry in the ASCL. This link brings up a form that is similar to the Submissions form and allows you to not only request changes to fields currently displayed, but also enter information for fields we are considering adding.
For example, we would like to disambiguate the URLs for refereed papers into those that describe a code and those that use a code; we'd also like to add categories to make searching for codes easier.
Something that's been on our wish list for a while is a "see also" feature, one that identifies, for a particular code, codes having a similar function or that someone looking at that code would likely be interested in, too.
All we need to do this are the data!Last update: July 20, 2021
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Ten codes were added to the ASCL in September 2015:
AFR (ASPFitsReader): A pulsar FITS file reader and analysis package
FalconIC: Initial conditions generator for cosmological N-body simulations in Newtonian, Relativistic and Modified theories
FARGO3D: Hydrodynamics/magnetohydrodynamics code
GFARGO: FARGO for GPU
OPERA: Objective Prism Enhanced Reduction AlgorithmsTempo: Pulsar timing data analysis
TRUVOT: True Background Technique for the Swift UVOT Grisms
pycola: N-body COLA method code
PyCS: Python Curve Shifting
XSHPipelineManager: Python Wrapper for the VLT/X-shooter Data Reduction Pipeline -
Ten codes were added to the ASCL in August 2015:
ColorPro: PSF-corrected aperture-matched photometry
FRELLED: FITS Realtime Explorer of Low Latency in Every Dimension
HMcode: Halo-model matter power spectrum computation
NGMIX: Gaussian mixture models for 2D images
NICOLE: NLTE Stokes Synthesis/Inversion CodeREDUCEME: Long-slit spectroscopic data reduction and analysis
SExSeg: SExtractor segmentation
SHDOM: Spherical Harmonic Discrete Ordinate Method for Atmospheric Radiative Transfer
TreeCorr: Two-point correlation functions
Trilogy: FITS image conversion software -
In July 2014, the ASCL moved to its current infrastructure; we left the older site up to give those who use the ASCL time to adjust to the new site and change their bookmarks. Now it's time -- some might say high time! -- that the previous site be retired. On or about September 4, the old ASCL site, both the WordPress site and the discussion forum housing the code entries, will no longer be accessible. All code entries housed on the old site will redirect to the entries here, and other pages will redirect to ascl.net. If you have questions or concerns about this change, please comment below or email me at aallen@ascl.net. Thank you!
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From feedback we received about the "Ref" field, we've relabeled that field to lessen the confusion about the article link(s) in the Code Record. What had appeared is:
What now appears is:
We supply a link, too, to a page that explains what the Website, Appears in, and Bibcode fields are, and hope this makes things clearer.If you have suggestions for the ASCL, please feel free to post them here or email editor@ascl.net. Thank you!
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Twenty codes were added to the ASCL in July 2015:
3D-Barolo: 3D fitting tool for the kinematics of galaxies
abo-cross: Hydrogen broadening cross-section calculator
Astrochem: Abundances of chemical species in the interstellar medium
AstroStat: Statistical analysis tool
DALI: Derivative Approximation for LIkelihoodsDRAMA: Instrumentation software environment
FAT: Fully Automated TiRiFiC
getsources: Multi-scale, multi-wavelength source extraction
HLINOP: Hydrogen LINe OPacity in stellar atmospheres
IEHI: Ionization Equilibrium for Heavy IonsK-Inpainting: Inpainting for Kepler
L-PICOLA: Fast dark matter simulation code
Least Asymmetry: Centering Method
Pelican: Pipeline for Extensible, Lightweight Imaging and CAlibratioN
PPInteractions: Secondary particle spectra from proton-proton interactionspyro: Python-based tutorial for computational methods for hydrodynamics
REDSPEC: NIRSPEC data reduction
slimplectic: Discrete non-conservative numerical integrator
SUPERBOX: Particle-multi-mesh code to simulate galaxies
Toyz: Large datasets and astronomical images analysis framework -
ASCL entries include a field called "Ref," for "refereed." As the ASCL indexes codes used in research, this field contains at least one link to a research article which describes a code or in which the code was used.
Screen capture showing Site and Ref fields in an ASCL entry The information in the Ref field is used by ADS to link papers and the codes they use, making it easy for someone reading an article to find the code(s) used in that research. You can find these associations in the "Associated Articles" section of an ADS entry.
In the first image below, which is a screen clip from an ADS entry, the Source Software link brings up the ASCL entry for a code used in the article; in the second image, the Paper 1 link brings up a paper that used the code:
Some papers have several links in the Ref field:
These are papers we found while researching a code or were entered by a code author when submitting code to the ASCL. Associating article entries with entries for the codes used in those articles makes finding the software used in the research easier. And though software is increasingly cited (in a variety of ways), it isn't always, so using the Ref/Associated Articles links can help a code author demonstrate the impact of a particular software package.I know the ASCL is missing many of these associations; ADS and the ASCL would like to improve this linkage. If you have ideas on how to do this, please post them here, or send them to editor@ascl.net. Thanks!
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Ten codes were added to the ASCL in June 2015:
dmdd: Dark matter direct detection
EATCVB: Coronal heating rate approximations
fsclean: Faraday Synthesis CLEAN imager
multiband_LS: Multiband Lomb-Scargle Periodograms
PLATO Simulator: Realistic simulations of expected observationspyKLIP: PSF Subtraction for Exoplanets and Disks
PyMC: Bayesian Stochastic Modelling in Python
REALMAF: Magnetic power spectra from Faraday rotation maps
SPRITE: Sparsity-based super-resolution algorithm
VAPID: Voigt Absorption-Profile [Interstellar] Dabbler