IVS 2015+2016 Biennial Report

Call for Submission and Instructions



Call

The IVS Directing Board invites all IVS components to submit reports for the IVS 2015+2016 Biennial Report. The 2015+2016 Biennial Report will cover the calendar years 2015 and 2016 covering the period from 1 January 2015 through 31 December 2016.

Due Date

Reports are due by January 31, 2017. The Biennial Report is a valuable way to document and communicate IVS' activities within and outside the IVS community, and this value increases the earlier the report is available. We hope to have the report ready for distribution no later than two months after the deadline. Please help us to achieve this goal by adhering to the deadline.

Two-column format and templates

We continue to use the two-column format that was introduced with the Annual Report 2013 (AR2013), as it allows more space for providing more information. The corresponding class and template files can be downloaded from the IVS Biennial Report ftp site's auxiliary directory and the IVS Biennial Report ftp site's example directory, respectively. If you submitted a report for the Annual Report 2014, you can download the final .tex file from the AR2014 ftp source file area and modify it for the Biennial Report (instead of starting from the template).

New information

New and/or critical information is distributed throughout this Web page, highlighted in red. Even if you have submitted previous annual/biennial reports, please scan the page for this information.

Citation

The Annual Report will be published as a NASA Technical Publication. The reference should be cited as follows: International VLBI Service for Geodesy and Astrometry 2015+2016 Biennial Report, edited by K. D. Baver, D. Behrend, and K. L. Armstrong, NASA/TP-2017-??????, 2017. (NASA's publication office will provide the running number represented by the six question marks, once the volume is finalized.)

Contents of the Biennial Report

As with the Annual Reports, the publication will include reports from all components and Coordinators:

  • Network Stations
  • Operation Centers
  • Correlators
  • Data Centers
  • Analysis Centers
  • Technology Development Centers
  • Network Coordinator
  • Analysis Coordinator
  • Technology Coordinator
  • Coordinating Center

We will continue with the bibliography list. So, please provide in addition to your report, a list of publications from the calendar years 2015 and 2016 that you would like included in the bibliography. Send your list directly to

Other items of general interest to IVS will be included in the publication. Please send the Coordinating Center any suggestions for other articles to be included in the Biennial Report.

What to Write About in Your Report

Suggested topics include the following:

  • Section 1: General Information. Please provide general information about your component such as its location, its sponsoring agency and what type of contribution you are making to IVS. If you have a photograph of your antenna, correlator, analysis center, etc. you should include it.
  • Section 2: Component Description. Please provide a technical/scientific description of your component that is relevant to your component type: for example, parameters of your network station's antenna, capabilities of your correlation center's correlator, types of analysis solutions that you do as an analysis center, technology developments in progress at your technology development center, etc.
  • Section 3: Staff. Please provide a list of your staff members who are contributing to IVS, provide some information about them and indicate what each person is working on.
  • Section 4: Current Status and Activities. Please provide information about the current status and activities of your component during the reporting period, such as operational support, milestones reached, analysis performed or ongoing projects. Please describe any significant changes compared to the previous year's report, such as staffing changes, new equipment, changes in methods, new types of results or a change in your activity level. You do not need to repeat information already provided in the previous Annual Report.
  • Section 5: Future Plans. Please describe your plans for the short-term future: scheduled operations, planned activities, maintenance, upgrades, new equipment, new staff, new software development or algorithms, new hardware arriving, etc.

Format

Please use the following guidelines in preparing your report.

  • Length. Component reports may be a maximum of five pages. The limit will be strictly enforced for this publication. The additional page w.r.t. the Annual Report and the class file with two-column output should provide you with sufficient space.
  • LaTeX format. The required format for reports is LaTeX.
  • Use of files. We only support the class file svmultivs_br.cls. The required list of keywords and formatting styles, most of which are also listed below, are described in the template file.
  • Class and style files. Your tex file must reference the svmultivs_br.cls document class. Other available style files support floating figures, bold math, inclusion of html link references and wrapping text around floating objects.
  • List of keywords. The svmultivs_br.cls class file introduced with AR2013 requires a specific set of keywords, which are listed below for your convenience. If you do not download and fill in the template file or use the AR2014 report as a starting point, please ensure that your document uses \documentclass[twocolumn,twoside]{svmultivs_br}, \maketitle, and \abstract{text}.
    Keywords for documentclass 'svmultivs_br':
    • \title*{} — the full title for the first page
    • \titlerunning{} — a shortened title for other pages
    • \author{} — listing of all authors for the first page, use superscript institution numbering only if the authors come from multiple institutions
    • \authorrunning{} — abbreviated list of authors for other pages – e.g., (single author) Behrend; (two authors) Behrend and Ma; (three or more authors) Behrend et al.
    • \authoremails{} — list of e-mail addresses for the authors
    • \institute{} — list of the names of institutions that supported your component and/or contributed to the report
    • \component{} — identifier of your component, such as Pulkovo Analysis Center
    • \ContactAuthorName{} — name of the contact author
    • \ContactAuthorTelephone{} — phone number of the contact author
    • \ContactAuthorEmail{} — e-mail address of the contact author
    • \NumberofInstitutions{} — number of institutions that supported your component and/or contributed to your report
    • \InstitutionPostAddress{n}{} — mailing address of institution n
    • \InstitutionCountry{n}{} — country of institution n
    • \InstitutionWebPage{n}{} — Web address of institution n
  • Abstract. It is strongly suggested that your abstract include highlights of your component's current activities and/or future plans. The correct way to specify an abstract is \abstract{text}. The text of the abstract can be broken into multiple lines in the source code (unlike stated in last year's template).
  • Graphics format. The use of pictures and images is strongly encouraged to make the publication more interesting. Processing will be done using the 'pdflatex' command. pdflatex natively supports the JPG, PNG, and PDF graphics formats. It, however, does not directly accept PostScript (PS) or Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) files. An easy workaround for the lack of PS/EPS support is to convert the PS or EPS file to PDF format using the pstopdf utility. PDF supports vector and raster formats; but the raster version produces significantly larger files than the equivalent PNG or JPG files. Hence, for bitmap representations PNG and JPG are the recommended formats. JPG is a raster format widely used for photos (with possible compression loss); PNG is a lossless raster format best used for diagrams, screenshots, and the like. Note that the support of the TIFF format was discontinued with newer versions of pdflatex; for lossless bitmaps the preferred format is PNG.
  • Graphics colors. PDF files of the individual component reports will be placed on the Web, and they support figures with colors. But the printed version will be done in black-and-white only. So color-coded quantities on plots should also be represented by some other scheme (e.g., symbol shape or size, dotted vs. straight lines). Please print your paper in black-and-white to make sure that the graphics convey your desired information. Please also consider labelling the color schemes in the plots' captions (e.g., "The red (dotted) line plots the values, and the blue (dashed) line plots the sigmas.").
  • Tables. The use of tables is encouraged to group information and break up the page text visually. The use of \begin{table*} tabular code \end{table*} will allow a table to span both columns of a page.
  • Mixing of one-column and two-column tables and figures. The svmultivs_br.cls class file is based on a class file that can have problems mixing one-column and two-column tables and figures. The wrong combination may suppress one or more tables or figures. Please check your final output carefully.
  • Table and figure justification. While the captions for both tables and figures should be left-justified, we ask that the objects themselves be centered.
  • Acknowledgements. If you want to acknowledge funding, contributions of non-co-authors, or any other item, please add an acknowledgement section at the end of your report. This section should be unnumbered and should thus be coded as \section*{Acknowledgements}.
  • Template file. A short template file, ivs-br-template.tex, is available.
  • FAQs and Common Problems. A collection of answers to frequently asked questions and common problems can be found on the FAQs page.

File Names

If your component is submitting a report for the first time or if you want to change the names of your files (e.g., from acgsfc.tex to acgoddard.tex), please contact to make sure that you do not use a name that another component is already using.

Testing

Please test your report on your local machine by downloading the files in the style file directory into the same directory on your local machine as your .tex and input graphics PDF, PNG, and JPG files. Then, depending on your platform and LaTeX installation, run the LaTeX compiler (e.g., pdflatex your_file_name.tex) successfully twice in a row. Running twice is necessary to convert all figure and table numbers from ?? to their final values. Unconverted numbers can prevent you from seeing the final page count and the final arrangement of text and figures. To view your compiled document, use a PDF viewer such as Adobe Reader. Depending on your LaTeX environment, there might be a built-in viewer provided for your convenience (e.g., TeXworks).

Final Submission

When you are ready to submit the final version of your report, please ftp to the entry level of the IVS Biennial Report ftp site at ftp://ivscc.gsfc.nasa.gov/. The user name is brincoming. For the password please contact We recommend to use passive mode with ftp to reduce chances of hang-ups or upload failures. When you log on, change directory to the "final" sub-directory using the cd final command and then submit the final copies of your tex and input graphics PDF, PNG, and JPG files files for the official submission. The entry level directory is no longer writeable. Please do NOT create an additional subdirectory under final for your submission, because this will not be picked up automatically and your submission may not enter the processing stream.

View Reports

You can browse the submitted reports on the IVS Biennial Report Web site.

Problems?

If you have problems or questions, please contact for issues related to file submissions, and for any other issue.