The Growth of the User Community of the La Silla Paranal Observatory Science Archive (2016)

Martino Romaniello, Magda Arnaboldi, Cristiano Da Rocha, Carlos De Breuck, Nausicaa Delmotte, Adam Dobrzycki, Nathalie Fourniol, Wolfram Freudling, Laura Mascetti, Alberto Micol, Jörg Retzlaff, Michael Sterzik, Ignacio Vera Sequeiros, Myha Vuong De Breuck, 2016, 2016, Msngr, 163, 5

The archive of the La Silla Paranal Observatory has grown steadily into a powerful science resource for the ESO astronomical community. Estab- lished in 1998, the Science Archive Facility (SAF) stores both the raw data generated by all ESO instruments and selected processed (science-ready) data. The growth of the SAF user com- munity is analysed through access and publication statistics. Statistics are pre- sented for archival users, who do not contribute to observing proposals, and contrasted with regular and archival users, who are successful in competing for observing time. Archival data from the SAF contribute to about one paper out of four that use data from ESO facil- ities. This study reveals that the blend of users constitutes a mixture of the tra- ditional ESO community making novel use of the data and of a new community being built around the SAF.

Read here the full paper