Some ideas for upgrading the IBR2 proposal evaluation

Some ideas for upgrading the IBR-2 proposal evaluation web application January 2018 Dénes Lajos Nagy

The IBR-2 proposal process and its IT background Actors of the IBR-2 proposal process include: • • • Proposers and their Co-proposers submitting the proposal Local Contacts (beamline scientists) at the IBR-2 spectrometers The FLNP Scientific Secretary Charis of the Expert Groups (EG) EG Members (reviewers) The FLNP Directorate

The IBR-2 proposal process and its IT background Steps of the IBR-2 proposal process: • • The Main Proposer uploads the proposal to the web application. The Scientific Secretary assigns the proposals in the web application to EGs and notifies the EG Chairs. Reports on precursor experiments, if available, are sent in e-mail separately. • The EG Chairs assign the proposals in the web application to reviewers (EG members). Each proposal should be assigned to two reviewers, taking into account their expertize, conflict of interest, proportional load and, in case of continuation proposal, the person of the reviewers of the previous proposals, an off-line task of the EG Chairs.

The IBR-2 proposal process and its IT background • The Scientific Secretary notifies the Reviewers and sends them the available reports on precursor experiments in separate e-mails. • The Reviewers assess the proposals off-line, also taking into account reports on precursor experiments. They upload their scores and reports to the web application. • The Scientific Secretary may discuss the reviews with Local Contacts and drafts the decision. • The FLNP Directorate meets the final decision on the proposals.

Shortcomings of the present web application The present web application demands a lot of unnecessary manual work from the Scientific Secretary, the EG Chairs and the Reviewers that, with the increasing number of proposals, results in delays of the process up to three weeks. The shortcomings of the web application include: • It doesn’t support an on-line work of the Scientific Secretary, the EG Chairs and the Reviewers; the manual copy-past work is very timeconsuming and it is the source of possible errors. • It supports no direct access either to experimental reports of precursor experiments or to previous proposals of the Proposers and Co-proposers.

Shortcomings of the present web application • It doesn’t support selecting the Reviewers by the EG Chairs with respect to expertize, conflict of interest, proportional load and, in case of continuation proposal, the person of the reviewers of the previous proposals. As a makeshift, the missing functions of the web application have been provisionally and partially supported by off-line spreadsheets which will be shown separately. However, these functions should be integrated in the web application resulting in an up-to-date system similar to those used by authors, editors and referees of scientific journals. This requires an estimated effort of about 6 months of a professional web programmer in close interaction with the FLNP Directorate and the Scientific Secretary.

Proposed recommendation by the PAC The PAC recommends the FLNP Directorate to upgrade the IBR-2 proposal evaluation web application to a professional system supporting the work of proposers, reviewers and the FLNP management and to consider entrusting with this task the Laboratory of Information Technology.

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