Rubin Data Rights for Rubin source IDs and plans on hosting data products after the 10-year survey

I am currently writing a proposal for a NASA ROSES 2024 call for Roman-related projects. The idea is to extend the UK In-Kind Contribution by providing person-power to create Roman and Rubin cross-match catalogue. I think such catalogue should be available through Rubin Science Platform and the planned NASA services. NASA requires that data products made possible through NASA funding be available to the wider public. However, there is a problem of Rubin data rights. The cross-match catalogue could be hosted on Rubin Science Platform and not break any policies on the Rubin side of things. I am wondering if a limited version of such catalogue should be available through the Roman Science Platform. A full table hosted by Rubin SP would contain: Rubin source ID, Roman source ID, coordinates from both catalogues, and magnitudes from both catalogues in all available bands.
A limited table hosted by Roman SP would contain only Roman and Rubin source IDs, and maybe coordinates and magnitudes for Roman. Then I could provide examples with queries to the Rubin data services to get the rest of the data for people with data rights.

My question is is the Rubin source ID a data category that can be provided outside of the Rubin Science Platform? If not, could someone help me create a justification for why such catalogue could be hosted only on the Rubin Science Platform?

An additional question is about what are plans for hosting Rubin Science Platform or Rubin data products after the end of the 10 years of the survey? Would it be possible to move a cross-match catalogue to a service such as NASA’s MAST?

Hi @kkruszynska – thanks for this question.

I can confirm that sharing only the identifier column for Rubin objects or sources is OK. As you mention, only Rubin data rights holders would be able to use the identifier to retrieve the associated proprietary data, like coordinates, magnitudes, and other measured properties.

Although the approximate coordinates for the Rubin source could be inferred from the associated Roman source’s coordinates from the cross-match table, that is not a violation of the Rubin Data Policy.

Regarding your second question, the exact plans for publicly hosting the full 10-year Rubin data set after the end of the final 2-year proprietary period remain to-be-determined.

Hi @jeffcarlin, thank you so much for your answer, that helps a lot!

Do you by chance know who I could contact about the Rubin Science Platform, asking about the possibility of hosting a cross-match catalogue? I think it would be good to add a letter of support to the grant proposal.

A good resource for those writing proposals is the DOI-citable reference that is available at this planned Rubin data products page. In most cases that DOI is what people have needed for grant proposals, in lieu of letters of support.

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