The progress of open-source analysis tools and the initiatives to publicly release very-high-energy astrophysical data have led us to open discussions about the definition of a common data format for gamma-ray astronomy (and nearby fields), in light of the one successfully used by Fermi-LAT. These discussions were gathered (or channeled) in the so-called 'gamma astro data format' (GADF) initiative, for which you can find information on this web site, and within these publications (arXiv:1610.01884, arXiv:2101.06018).
Our motivations for a common format can be highlighted by:
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the increased number of experiments that are opening or willing to open their data to the whole community;
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the rapid progress of multi-wavelength and multi-messenger astrophysics and the increasing wish of the community to access and analyse data from different instruments in a unified way;
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the rising effort of the community and strong wish of funding agencies to make data easily findable and usable, as already happening in the astronomical community with the IVOA standards;
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ensuring the legacy data products of the currently operating instruments is preserved in an accessible and usable format.
Each collaboration will decide the extent in which they will share (or publicly release) their data, as well as the format of those products. The experiments' governance is obviously beyond the scope of our work and we do not aim to influence any of their choices. Our motivation is to make this data sharing/release possible at all, easing the long term preservation and interpretation of VHE data.
In this context, people involved in the GADF initiative are now convinced that a new step should be taken to further develop the format and to widen its adoption. For this effort, we would like to involve representatives of current and planned experiments, so that this format can be commonly used and accommodate the needs of each collaboration.
We are thus the following experiments:
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for the 'pointing' instruments: ASTRI, CTAO, FACT, H.E.S.S., MAGIC, VERITAS
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for the 'drifting' instruments: HAWC, IceCube, Km3Net, LHASSO, SWGO, Tibet AS-gamma
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as precursor of a HE data format: Fermi-LAT
