Tass Publicity Department

[Tom Droege <droege@fnal.gov>]

I just got an apologetic note from Michael about talking to
the BBC instead of me.  

I do not consider that I "own" or "run" tass.  The most I will
admit to is being "spiritual leader", or "grand poo bah".  

Since anyone in the world can be a member of tass if they want
to be, then anyone can talk to anyone about their work with 
tass.  No one, not even me, can speak "for" tass.  It is a fine
distinction, I know.

In "Up The Organization" the then president of Avis discusses
this.  He did not have a publicity department.  He considered 
everyon at Avis the publicity department.  At tass, you are
the publicity department.    

So any of you can talk to anyone about tass.  You can speak with
just as much authority as you can get other members to endorse 
your talk, or sign on to your paper.  

I hope we all consider the data to be in the public domain.  I 
think the JHUAPL group did a neat thing by giving a disk full of
data to a student to use for a science fair project.  In my 
opinion this is a very appropriate use of the data.  

What is done with the data is another matter.  When you work on
some data and publish it, then your reputation is on the line.
You should distinguish where you got the data - the tass archives -
from what you have done with it.  Of course it is courteous to 
ask all the "workers" to be on a general paper when you publish.
It is a co-operative venture.  There can't be papers without 
data.  

It seems to me to be perfectly OK to take one little piece of 
data that you have collected and and analyzed and publish under 
only your own name with reference to tass.  This is how Glenn
did it in IBVS 4575.  It is also appropriate to list most of 
the real workers as I did last year at AAS, and Michael is doing 
this year.  

The sins that I see are taking tass data and publishing it as your
own work without giveing credit to tass in some proper way.  Sometimes
this would just be a reference to tass, other times you would need
to reference individuals.  

Another sin would be to take tass data, analyze it in your own way,
and publish it as "tass" analysis.  Thus making tass responsible for
its accuracy.  We don't want to see the tass effort blamed for bad
data analysis, I think. 

As always, I speak only for myself.

Tom Droege