It’s been a busy summer for the Planet Four: Ridges science team. The project’s first research paper was submitted to the journal Icarus. A big thank you to all the volunteers and our active volunteers on Talk who have contributed lots of great polygonal ridge locations that went into the paper’s analysis. Below you’ll find a map showing the CTX images that were searched by Planet Four: Ridges volunteers using the main classification interface as part of the study.

The first step in this process is getting the referee reports back. The referees are researchers studying Mars who give independent feedback on the paper. Normally the identities of the referees are anonymous, and the author does not know who they are. The referees read the paper and give the editor their opinion on whether the paper is of sufficient quality to be published in the journal and give feedback on how the manuscript/work could be improved. The job of the referee is to point out areas that should be clarified in the paper and where more analysis needs to be done if needed before the paper can be accepted for publication in the journal.

We’ve recently received the feedback from the two anonymous referees. The referees see that there is merit in the Planet Four: Ridges catalog. Thye also gave a lot of great feedback on where we can improve the analysis and manuscript. We’re working on addressing the referee’s comments and taking on board their feedback. We’ll keep you posted as we move through the paper revision process. We’ll do some further analysis, reworking of the paper draft, and add some additional text. Once we’ve done that, we’ll write a response to the referee’s report outlining what was changed/added to the paper to address the points raised by the referees. Then we’ll resubmit the paper and send the response to the referees to the journal. The referees will read everything and send back further questions, concerns, and points that need clarification. We will post more details about the key results of the paper once the paper is accepted and published by the journal.