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While ancient scientists often had patrons to fund their work, peer review of proposals for the allocation of resources is a foundation of modern science. A very common method is that proposals are evaluated by a small panel of experts (due…
(No abstract for this journals: article commences: ) Fairness is a key issue in the careers of astronomers. I examine here the anecdota l suggestion that "you're more likely to get time if you're on the TAC", using public and published data…
Observatories are complex scientific and technical institutions serving diverse users and purposes. Their telescopes, instruments, software, and human resources engage in interwoven workflows over a broad range of timescales. These…
Competitive access to modern observatories has intensified as proposal volumes outpace available telescope time, making timely, consistent, and transparent peer review a critical bottleneck for the advancement of astronomy. Automating parts…
Telescope arrays are receiving increasing attention due to their promise of higher resource utilization, greater sky survey area, and higher frequency of full space-time monitoring than single telescopes. Compared with the ordinary…
A common flaw of astronomers is to believe that they know the truth even when data is scarce. I provide ten examples where this approach led to wrong strategic decisions in research plans, causing unnecessary delays in finding the truth. In…
The preparation of the long-term telescope schedule follows the submission and scientific review of new proposals. At the European Southern Observatory (ESO) this process entails scheduling the scientific proposals according to their…
In many areas of decision-making, forecasting is an essential pillar. Consequently, many different forecasting methods have been proposed. From our experience, recently presented forecasting methods are computationally intensive, poorly…
The historical development of ground based astronomical telescopes leads us to expect that space-based astronomical telescopes will need to be operational for many decades. The exchange of scientific instruments in space will be a…
Telescopes are much more expensive than astronomers, so it is essential to minimize required sample sizes by using the most data-efficient statistical methods possible. However, the most commonly used model-independent techniques for…
Peer review is a laborious, yet essential, part of academic publishing with crucial impact on the scientific endeavor. The current lack of incentives and transparency harms the credibility of this process. Researchers are neither rewarded…
The preparation of a telescope observation time proposal is a recurring activity in observational astronomy. It is a necessary investment of time and effort to obtain data to advance a research topic. Therefore, the success of an…
The optical observations of wide fields of view encounter the problem of selection of best exposure time. As there are usually plenty of objects observed simultaneously, the quality of photometry of the brightest ones is always better than…
A concept of the ground-based optical astronomical observations efficiency is considered in this paper. We believe that a telescope efficiency can be increased by properly allocating observation tasks with respect to the current environment…
As telescope facilities become increasingly more capable they also become increasingly complex and require additional resources to operate. This is particularly true for the current and future generations of "software defined telescopes"…
US funding agencies alone distribute a yearly total of roughly $65B dollars largely through the process of proposal peer review: scientists compete for project funding by submitting grant proposals which are evaluated by selected panels of…
The number of scientific publications is constantly rising, increasing the strain on the review process. The number of submissions is actually higher, as each manuscript is often reviewed several times before publication. To face the deluge…
Nowadays many telescopes around the world are automated and some networks of robotic telescopes are active or planned as shown by the lists we draw up. Such equipment could be used for the training of students and for science in the…
The observation of celestial objects is a fundamental activity in astronomy. Ground-based and space telescopes are used to gather electromagnetic radiation from space, allowing astronomers to study a wide range of celestial objects and…
In response to the challenges presented by high reviewer workloads in traditional panel reviews and increasing numbers of submitted proposals, ALMA implemented distributed peer review to assess the majority of proposals submitted to the…