The Atacama Large Millimetresubmillimetre Array ALMA receivers and technical papers are cited fewer than once in every six publications. This citation shortage is impeding the development of future submillimetre instruments. In an effort to facilitate the correct citations of ALMA receivers and technical papers this memo provides a comprehensive list of papers for the scientific community. This list was produced in discussion with the scientific and instrumentalist community based on a June 2024 survey at the European Southern Observatory workshop on the ALMA Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade as well as with the ALMA technical staff. The authors now encourage the community to enhance their alreadyexcellent ALMA science with the appropriate references to ensure future submillimetre instrumentation can keep addressing the key questions about our Universe.
['Astrophysics - Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics', 'Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics', 'Astrophysics - Astrophysics of Galaxies', 'Astrophysics - Solar and Stellar Astrophysics']
Recommended receiver papers for ALMA users
{'Recommended receiver papers for ALMA users': 'Tom Bakx 1 and John Conway 2 , Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden', '5th September 2024': "1. Introduction. In an ideal world, observational astronomers and instrumentalists are in a natural symbiosis, where state-of-the-art instruments allow for observations that challenge our understanding of the fundamental properties of our Universe and everything within it. In this symbiosis, astronomers acknowledge the contributions of the instrumentalists, in particular via citing instrumental academic papers, which in turn enables the further development of science-guided instruments via increased access to research funding. In contrast to this ideal, the total number of ALMA science papers that make use of a given ALMA receiver band currently outstrips the number that cites that band's instrument paper by a factor of between 6 and 300 (see Figure 1).  \nFigure 1: The number of publications (as of May 2024) associated with each band according to the ALMA science archive after accounting for duplicates and multi-band observations. The number of citations of the band instrument description paper is overlaid, showing the discrepancy between the scientific usage of the ALMA receivers and the academic recognition of the instrumentalists who have built these receivers.  \n<!-- image -->  \nNote - this memo solely contains the opinion of the authors formed in discussion with the astronomer and instrument builder communities, and does not reflect the official policy of the ALMA telescope.", '2. Recommended Receiver Papers.': 'In this memo, we aim to facilitate the access to recommended receiver instrument references (see Table 1) in an effort to boost citation numbers. Such community-wide recognition will greatly assist instrument researchers in delivering future projects, including the development of new receivers for the Wide-band Sensitivity Upgrade (WSU; Carpenter et al. 2023). Although receiver citation information is already (partially) available in Table 4.2 (page 31 of the current version) of the ALMA Technical Handbook at  \nhttps://almascience.eso.org/documents-and-tools/cycle11/alma-technical-handbook, this memo updates this receiver citation information and gives direct ADS hyperlinks to the relevant papers to facilitate citing these receiver publications in future ALMA astronomy papers.  \nTable 1 lists for each receiver band the recommended references, and has been produced through direct communication with each relevant receiver group. For Bands 1 and 2, the final papers describing these receivers are in preparation with likely completion within approximately 6 months; in the meantime the relevant receiver groups have confirmed that the references given in Table 1 should be used. When final papers are available for these two bands an amendment to this memo will be submitted. For some receiver bands, there are multiple references that together give the full technical description of the receiver; these additional references, including a reference to the local oscillator development common to all receiver bands (excluding future Band 2), are given in the Appendix Table 2.  \nAlthough this memo concentrates on the recommended citations for ALMA receivers, there are many other papers relevant to the technical development of ALMA that astronomers may also wish to cite. An incomplete list of such non-receiver technical papers is given in Appendix Table 3. It should be noted that, unlike for the receiver papers, the authors of this memo have not made contact with the development groups to confirm these references. The authors have taken efforts to produce a complete and verified list of technical references in this memo, and invite missed or further references for updated versions of this memo.  \nTable 1: Recommended paper references for ALMA receivers (Cit. indicates the total number of citations to the listed paper in both the astronomy and instrumentation literature, and Pub. gives the number of astronomy papers that have made use of that receiver as of May 2024).  \n- Note * The proposed papers to cite for Band 1 and 2 are preliminary pending the publication of final instrument papers that are currently in preparation, (expected within 6 to 8 months).\n- 3. Community feedback. At the June 2024 ESO Workshop on the ALMA Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade, which was well attended by both astronomers and instrumentalists, discussions were held on the issue of instrument citations. In addition, during the meeting thirty participants participated in the open questionnaire which provided useful context and suggestions around the instrument citation issue.  \nThe discussion and survey showed in general strong support amongst astronomers for acknowledging the work of instrumentalists via citations. Two-thirds of those responding to the survey noted that a citation policy within the ALMA consortium would be desirable to give guidance as to which technical citations should be included in papers. The replies were divided on whether instrumental references are best placed at the first mention of the instrument in the observation section of a paper or within the typical acknowledgement to the ALMA datasets at the end of a paper. Given there is currently no official policy on this we suggest here that astronomers, if they wish to acknowledge the contribution of their instrumentation colleagues, make their own choice of where in the paper to add such a citation given that both options would help alleviate the citation issue highlighted in Figure 1. Experience with our discussions with instrumentalists strongly indicates that citations, wherever they are placed in a paper, are much more valuable than giving written  \n- acknowledgements to receiver groups.  \nAn important point brought up in the survey was the difference between the journals that instrumentalists (e.g., IEEE) and observers (e.g., A&A, ApJ) use to publish and the fact that astronomers may not have access through their institute to the full text of the instrument paper they would be citing. One recommendation to alleviate this issue is to publish the most recent version of the instrument paper to a preprint server (or other open web site) accessible to astronomers so everyone can read the references. Beyond efforts from the community, and from within ALMA, to encourage the appropriate referencing of receivers, two participants point out that the astronomical journals should also consider reminding the observers for adequate referencing of the receivers used in submitted manuscripts.  \nTwo participants noted that the citations should liberally include other ALMA technical aspects and operations. To accommodate these comments, and to celebrate the associated efforts of the researchers that enable the operation of ALMA as a facility, we provide a partial list of such references in Table 3. In the future, an online tool to facilitate the search for the appropriate references (hosted, for example, on the ALMA web page as suggested by three participants) would mark the ideal solution to the citation issue, and will furthermore help the citation of updated papers in the future.', 'Appendix - Additional references': 'This appendix gives additional receiver references (Table 2) and a partial list (Table 3) of suggested non-receiver references to other technical aspects of the current ALMA system.  \nTable 2: Additional receiver references  \nTable 3: Additional ALMA non-receiver technical references'}