The NASA Astrophysics Data System: Overview

The NASA Astrophysics Data System Abstract Service has become a kev compone nt of astronomical research. It provides bibliographic information daily, o r near daily, to a majority of astronomical researchers worldwide. We describe the history of the development of the system and its current st atus. Urania (Boyce 1996). and the ADS role in the emerging electronic astr onomical data environment are discussed. Astronomy is unique in that it alr eady has a fully functional data resource, where several of the most import ant data sources exist on-line and inter-operate nearly seamlessly. The ADS and the Strasbourg Data Center (CDS; Geneva et al. 2000) form the core of this resource. We show several examples of how to use the ADS. and we show how ADS use has : increased as a function of time. Currently it is still increasing exponen tially; with a doubling time for number of queries of 17 months. Using the ADS logs we make the first detailed model of how scientific journ als are read as a function of time since publication. We find four distinct components. We directly compare the readership rate with the citation rate for scientific articles as a funct ion of age. Citations generally follow reads, but there are some differences. The main journals of astronomy have differences in the ways they are read a nd cited. We discuss these from a number of different aspects. The impact of the ADS on astronomy can be calculated after making some simp le assumptions. We find that the ADS increases the efficiency of astronomic al reseal ch by 333 Full Time Equivalent (2000 hour) research years per yea r, and that the value of the early development of the ADS for astronomy, co mpared with waiting for mature technologies to be adopted, is 2332 FTE rese arch years. A full technical description of the ADS is in three companion articles: Eic hhorn et al. (2000), Accomazzi et al. (2000), and Grant et al. (2000). The ADS is available at http://adsabs.harvard.edu/.