Publication policies

For everyone

Scientific papers based on released data products are not subject to any internal Rubin Observatory review board. Manuscripts can be submitted directly to the scientific journal.

The right to access, analyze, and publish work based on proprietary Rubin data is limited to Rubin data rights holders. However, some data is public (not proprietary; e.g., alerts, derived data products), a few (limited) exceptions allow sharing subsets to facilitate scientific collaboration, and papers can be co-authored by colleagues without Rubin data rights.

Learn more about the Rubin data policy.

Papers that are based on Rubin data products should cite the relevant publications for the Rubin data releases and the LSST Science Pipelines.

Find out how to cite Rubin Observatory.

For Science Collaboration members

The individual Science Collaborations have unique publication policies that apply to papers written by their members which use software or derived data products that were developed within the collaboration. They may also have an internal publication review process.

Science Collaboration members are recommended to check their collaboration's policies before preparing and submitting manuscripts.

For Commissioning team members

All Rubin staff and in-kind contributors to Rubin Commissioning (as named in SITCOMTN-050) must abide by the policies in the "Information Sharing During Commissioning" document (SITCOMTN-076).

For Rubin staff

The Rubin Observatory Construction Project has a publication policy that applies to Rubin staff and covers technology papers that describe LSST infrastructure and data releases that result from Project-funded work.

The publication policy does not cover, e.g., scientific journal articles with Rubin staff co-authors who contributed to the work with their independent research time, or papers by Rubin staff based on published data products.

The publication policy does cover papers that:

• describe infrastructure work to design, develop, construct, commission, or operate Rubin Observatory;
• have any authors who are supported by Rubin Observatory funds to work to design, develop, construct, commission, or operate Rubin Observatory;
• are based on access to non-public Rubin Observatory/LSST data;
• are based on access to non-public intellectual property of Rubin Observatory.

Publications to which the Policy applies must follow the internal review process with the Publication Board.