Astrophysics Data System

The Astrophysics Data System (usually referred to as ADS), developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), is an online database of over eight million astronomy and physics papers from both peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed sources. Abstracts are available free online for almost all articles, and full scanned articles are available in Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) and Portable Document Format (PDF) for older articles. New articles have links to electronic versions hosted at the journal's webpage, but these are typically available only by subscription (which most astronomy research facilities have). It is managed by the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

ADS is a powerful research tool and has had a significant impact on the efficiency of astronomical research since it was launched in 1992. Literature searches that previously would have taken days or weeks can now be carried out in seconds via the ADS search engine, custom-built for astronomical needs. Studies have found that the benefit to astronomy of the ADS is equivalent to several hundred million US dollars annually, and the system is estimated to have tripled the readership of astronomical journals.

Use of ADS is almost universal among astronomers worldwide, and therefore ADS usage statistics can be used to analyze global trends in astronomical research. These studies have revealed that the amount of research an astronomer carries out is related to the per capita gross domestic product (GDP) of the country in which he/she is based, and that the number of astronomers in a country is proportional to the GDP of that country, so the total amount of research done in a country is proportional to the square of its GDP divided by its population.