Data and Metadata
Proposal data, proposal metadata, observational data, and observational metadata are defined as follows.
- Proposal data consist of material submitted by the PI (title, abstract, author information, scientific and technical justifications, source/resource information and related sessions) and a disposition letter, which contains scheduling priorities and review feedback.
- Proposal metadata consists of source positions, observation frequencies, and integration times.
- Observational data include visibility data and all resulting data products.
- Observational metadata include the positional and sky coverage information, frequency settings, frequency coverage and resolution, angular resolution, uv-coverage, antenna lists, source and calibrator names, polarization, observation date(s) and start/end times, time on source and sampling rate, weather information and PI name.
For projects with scheduling priorities of A, B, C, or D the name of the PI, proposal ID, title, hours awarded, proposal type, expiration date for Trigger proposals, and the aggregate time observed for Large proposals are made public immediately in the relevant observatory Science Program. This information plus the list of co-Is and the abstract is made available from the Proposal Finder Tool (PFT). The information submitted as part of proposals that are rejected or not observed will remain confidential. The scientific and technical justification, figures, references, and review rankings and reviews are never made public for any proposal.
While proposal source lists are not made public directly, proposal metadata are available publicly from the Archive Access Tool once the data for a proposal have been collected. Observational metadata will be made available without restrictions when an observation is archived. Additionally, Operator Logs are made available once the data have been collected at http://www.vla.nrao.edu/cgi-bin/oplogs.cgi.
