eROSITA_DE Individual External Collaborators: Guidelines
The text below provide a guideline for all potential Individual external collaborators. It is mostly extracted from the official eROSITA Policy Document (signed on 16.04.2019)
"Individual External Collaborators (IEC) are scientists who are not Consortium members, but who are nonetheless permitted to participate in or lead projects using eROSITA_DE proprietary data in collaboration with Consortium members, contribute to eROSITA-related activities, and author related papers. IECs are approved by the PS upon request and recommendation of the relevant Working Group chair(s) and in consultation with the CCB.
An IEC is typically an individual but is understood also to include an individual and a PhD student working under their direct supervision.
IEC requests are evaluated based on a written proposal. These should have defined aims, scope and duration, and specific outputs/deliverables, typically a scientific paper or papers. IEC proposals must also be submitted for non-members of the Consortium who wish to co-author publications led by a consortium member based on eROSITA_DE proprietary data. Proposals may also be submitted for projects initiated by the IEC.
All IECs must be sponsored by an existing consortium member, who presents the IEC proposal for consideration. The sponsoring member must be involved in the scientific work of the IEC and any resulting publication(s), and is responsible for ensuring the IEC and their project adhere to the consortium rules. IECs may also be submitted without a sponsoring consortium member. In this case the WG chairs will assign an appropriate sponsor or sponsor(s) from within the consortium to work with the IEC. The rights and scientific interests of External Collaborators shall be subordinate to those of Consortium members.
IEC proposals will be evaluated by the relevant WG Chair(s), in consultation with the WG to ensure there is no conflict of interest. The WG chairs may suggest additional participants or collaborators in the project in addition to the sponsor(s). Other consortium members will be permitted to join the external collaboration project and become an author of any consequent publications should their contribution merit authorship, consistent with the publication policy. The PS grants IEC status upon recommendation of the WG chair(s) and in consultation with the CCB, to ensure there are no remaining conflicts with other Working Groups.
The CCB should review periodically the status of IEC and the progress of their activities. When requested to do so, IEC shall submit reports to the PS and the relevant WG chair(s) describing their activities related to the use of eROSITA_DE proprietary data.
IECs will typically be granted for a period of one year, with the possibility of renewal/extension. Renewal requests are the responsibility of the IEC and/or the sponsoring member and IEC status will lapse by default in the absence of such a renewal proposal. The sponsor may nonetheless apply for renewal of IEC status that has lapsed with the agreement the WG chair(s).
Research projects and publications led by IECs will be submitted to the Publication Archive by the sponsoring Consortium member. If he/she has left the Consortium, a new member will act as liaison for the External Collaborator, and will be responsible for uploading and updating EC-led publication in the Publication Archive.
As per general policy, IEC may not participate in research projects that make use of proprietary eROSITA data outside the eROSITA_DE collaboration (i.e. work at the same time on Russian proprietary data), unless authorized to do so by the PI.
Collaborative projects of scope greater than that described above will need special consideration ('Group External Collaborations')."
Proposals Preparation
The first step is to identify the relevant Working Group(s) for the project. Within the WG(s) the IEC proposer should contact and define a "sponsoring member". This can be the Chair of the WG, or any full member of the consortium. Once the project is identified and defined, please fill in the doc template with all relevant information.
- A complete proposal will contain:
- Name/Affiliation/email of the EC
- Name/Affiliation/email of the proposing consortium member;
- A detailed description of the scientific proposal;
- Expected Outcome (scientific publication(s), a catalog, shared software and/or simulations, resources, etc)
- A list of potential collaborators in the eROSITA_DE;
- Expected duration of the project
After the project is defined and the template form filled in, it is the responsibility of the Sponsoring Member to submit it to the collaboration, following the instructions below.
TIPS:
- Sponsoring consortium members are encouraged to discuss IEC possible proposals with their WG chair(s) and with other members of the WG before submission of the proposal.
- Between the time a proposal is submitted through the wiki (see below), and the time it is approved by the PS, a typical timescale is a few weeks. This is simply because the WGs need to properly assess the proposals first, then they need to be announced to the CCB (which meets only every second week), and finally approved by the PS.
- The procedure to approve simple co-authorship of external scientists in eROSITA_DE papers (i.e., for example, IEC for people who will not work on eROSITA data, but only on ancillary datasets within an eROSITA_DE project/paper) should be faster and simpler: for example by bundling together multiple IECs for the same paper.
How to submit EC proposals in the eROSITA_DE Wiki (for sponsoring Consortium members)
1. Uploading Proposals on the Wiki
1.1 Login into the Wiki
1.2 Edit the URL
example: let's say, the user is member of EroStars; then go to wiki.mpe.mpg.de/eRosita/EroStars/
- then the proposal wiki page will have to be named wiki.mpe.mpg.de/eRosita/EroStars/EcProposalName (where Name is a unique identifier of the proposal, typically the Name of the External collaborator)
1.3 Use the right Wiki template and save the page (you might also want to subscribe to this page to get notification when it is evaluated) with the Name specified in point 1.2 above.
- Do not forget to set the appropriate EroXxx group in ACL and Title etc.
2. Proposals Submission and Evaluation
The eROSITA_DE sponsoring member loads a proposal to the wiki, and add it to the list in the page EcProposalList. This act constitutes the official "submission" of the proposal
The whole CCB is notified automatically of any change of the EcProposalList page, and so are the relevant WG chair(s) represented in the CCB. Other members of the collaboration are free to subscribe to the wiki page containing the list of IEC proposal, so they also get a notification.
The relevant WG chair(s) collect comments & concerns from the WG(s) (possible scientific conflicts) within a time period of 2 weeks.
- If the above process ends up with a positive recommendation of the WG, the relevant WG chair(s) contact the chair of CCB notifying that the proposal is ready to be discussed at the next CCB. This goes into the CCB agenda.
- At the next CCB meeting, IEC proposal is approved or rejected by the CCB
- The PS informs the sponsoring eROSITA_DE collaboration member about the outcome and modify the status of the proposal on the wiki (pending/approved/terminated, etc.) accordnigly.