PAPCO Rules of the Road

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With PAPCO becoming more widespread and more PAPCO Modules being written, there now is a need to establish some rules of the road for the use of PAPCO and the use of the data made available through PAPCO.

1. List of PAPCO usage.
   Please inform Reiner Friedel of any publications and conference presentations that make use of PAPCO. This is not for personal vanity but to build up recognition for PAPCO in order to obtain future funding. Such a list is invaluable in showing usage of PAPCO.
   
   
2. Use of data
   Anyone who uses PAPCO (public or private) modules with data other than his/her own must obtain permission from the home PI or his designate to use the data.
   
   "Use" is construed to mean development of hypothetical explanations and synthesis that explain the data that is moving towards public discussion (talks, preprints, conference proceedings) of these ideas as established by the data. Survey plots on the same time scale are of course encouraged outside of the permission discussed above. As a thesis is developed it is suggested that the thesis at least be cleared with the relevant teams upon whose data quality the thesis rides. These are very complicated instruments, and we all should know that none of the derived quantities are trivially related to the direct observables.
   
   This is out of courtesy to the instrument home team, to facilitate dialogues about appropriate uses of the data given its level of reduction etc., and to let the home team know who is using their data. This is also in the best interests of the scientific reputation of the motivator of the study! Permission will almost always be given.
   
   
3. Module dissemination and use
   
   1. Anyone who uses PAPCO should make a dataset available through a module.
   2. Anyone who designs a PAPCO module should make it available to the general community
   This rule is designed to make sure that all who use PAPCO also put something in. A great deal of effort has been spent so far in designing the current modules: The return on the investment is the gaining of access to other modules and data. And, by making new datasets available through PAPCO, the utility of the system will increase, further rewarding investment in it.
   
   
4. Module Author Responsibilities
   
   1. Make the module available!
   2. Maintain Web page for module distribution, info on module, sample plots, updates. This info should include notes on module portability.
   3. If module uses wGet, maintain data site with latest data files.
   4. The module should work under UNIX, VMS and Windows 95.
   5. The module should be self-documenting.
   6. The module should adhere to PAPCO philosophy and make use of as many PAPCO features as possible.
   7. A two-level module setup is encouraged: An open, general purpose module for the use of the community at large, and a developmental module for the restricted use of a given instrument/data team. Access to the latter module may be password restricted. Parts of the developmental module should migrate to the open module as they mature.
   8. Let Reiner Friedel know about updates so that links to the modules can be maintained from the PAPCO Home Page . Make use of the PAPCO mailing list for general announcements about module updates etc.

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