Third Galaxy Zoo paper submitted
Update : Paper now available.
It has taken over six months and a lot of work, but we have finally decided the third Galaxy Zoo paper is ready for submission to a scientific journal, and to be made public. The paper was already in reasonably good shape a month or so ago, but given the number of interesting results it contains, we wanted to be sure the presentation is as clear as we can make it. We therefore had yet another round of internal review by the coauthors, and elicited comments from a couple of other colleagues with links to the project. The response was very helpful and encouraging, so I decided to take a bit more time to improve the analysis further and perform some extra tests. We’ve now got a paper we are all really pleased with. We hope that all of you, and the journal referee, agree with us!
The paper is long, 30 pages in total. Even so, we’ve tried to make the paper as readable as possible by shifting some of the material to appendices (additional sections at the end of the paper). Much of the length of the paper is due to the large number of figures. Again though, we’ve tried to make these easier to absorb by combined multiple plots into single figures and maintaining a consistent style.
The paper has been submitted to the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (MNRAS), one of the world’s principal astronomy journals, and the same publication that the two previous Galaxy Zoo papers (by Kate and Chris) have been submitted to. The paper will now go for peer review. Hopefully we will have the referee’s comments back in a month or so, then there will probably be a few changes to make before it is accepted by the journal and published. As this process takes so long, and this work is so timely, we have decided to make the paper public before it is accepted by MNRAS, so other researchers can see our work as soon as possible. The paper has therefore been added to the astro-ph archive. It will be available for anyone to read from Tuesday 3rd June.
I’m taking a break for a fortnight, but then I’ll write a few blog posts, following on from this one, explaining all the results of the paper in less technical terms.
Update : Paper now available.
Galaxy Zoo 
Congratulations to the TEAM on the submission of the third ZOO paper. At this rate we could very well start a new branch of science which I would venture to call ZOO SCIENCE – an integrated discipline incorporating astronomy, astrophysics, social sciences ( psychology, sociology, etc. ) as well as humanities ( co-operation between the professionals & amateurs with education of the public along the way plus recreational activities in the form of ZOOISTS meet-ups ).
Sounds amazing, I can’t wait to read it! By the way, if the peer review comments should be ready in a month or so for this one, what about the peer review for the other papers? Kate’s one was submitted well over a month ago, if my memory serves me correctly.
Congratulations, Team! 🙂
We’re still waiting. It’s in the hands of the journals and the referees.
Great work. Hope the paper gets accepted soon.