Instructions to Authors - Chapter Guidelines
We encourage chapter submission from all members of the scientific community.Goals of individual chapters:
a) Self-contained description of a science application including background and motivation
b) Demonstrate the science outcomes that are enabled by the capabilities of a particular component of the SKA Phase 1 deployment
c) Document the extent to which scientific outcomes might be delivered during early science operations of SKA Phase 1, in a period when performance is still ramping up to its final anticipated level (e.g., 50% capability)
d) Anticipate the science outcomes enabled by the capabilities of SKA Phase 2
Performance Assumptions
It's important that a consistent set of performance assumptions is used in preparing chapters. To that end, we request that the science outcomes are assessed for three well-defined scenarios described below:
1) The SKA1 Baseline Design as published in March 2013 (link below)and with the corresponding Science capabilities described in the September 2013 Performance Memo (link below).
– The basic configuration design philosophy of a dense core combined with logarithmic arms yields about 50% of the total "natural" array sensitivity over a wide range of possible beam sizes.
– In Phase 1 it is anticipated that only three of the five frequency bands defined in the Baseline Design of SKA1-mid will be populated. In preparing a chapter, you can assume that any three of the five bands are available, giving justification as necessary for why particular bands are employed
– Similarly, for SKA1-survey it is anticipated that only one of the three PAF bands defined in the Baseline Design will be populated. In preparing a chapter, you can assume that any one of the three bands is available, giving justification as necessary for why that particular band is employed
The baseline band definitions in MHz are:
| Band | MID | SUR |
| 1 | 350-1050 | 350-900 |
| 2 | 950-1760 | 650-1670 |
| 3 | 1650-3050 | 1500-4000 |
| 4 | 2800-5180 | NA |
| 5 | 4600-13800 | NA |
For SKA-LOW the range is 50-350 MHz
2) An “early science” phase of deployment for each SKA1 component (SKA1-low, SKA1-survey, SKA1-mid), where sensitivity has grown to about 50% of its fully specified level.
3) SKA Phase 2 performance that includes:
– 4x SKA1 sensitivity 50-350 MHz
– 10x SKA1 sensitivity 350 MHz - 24 GHz (including deployment of all five frequency bands)
– 50% of the "natural" sensitivity of the facility over a wide range of beam size
– 20x SKA1 FoV 350 MHz - 1.5 GHz
– 20x SKA1 maximum angular resoltuion 50 MHz - 24 GHz
LaTeX and Word Templates, Page limits & Publisher
There is no formal upper or lower limit to chapter length, but we are anticipating that longer contributions will be under 15 A4 pages while shorter contributions will be less than 8 A4 pages. Clarity and conciseness are encouraged, and the chapters will be edited by the SOC.
The proceedings of the conference will be published in Proceedings of Science (link), the open access online journal organized by SISSA, the International School for Advanced Studies based in Trieste, Italy. The procedure for submission and the required style-file will be provided soon. Provisionary Latex and Word templates can be downloaded here: the final version used for submission will be very similar.
Links to useful documentation:
Baseline Design for SKA Phase 1 Link
SKA Phase 1 Performance Memo Link
SKA Phase 1 Science Assessment Workshops (in reverse chronological order)
Transients
Cosmic Magnetism
Cosmology
Cradle of Life and our Galaxy
Galaxy Evolution – HI
Galaxy Evolution – continuum
Pulsars and Fundamental Physics
Epoch of Re-ionisation and Cosmic Dawn
Chapters from Previous Science Book "Science with the SKA" (2004) Titles
Many (but not all) chapters available through astro-ph
Link 1 Link 2 Link 3
