2nd Annual Report OPTICON Optical Infrared Co-ordination ...

1.4.1.2 Description of the selection procedure
Observing time is awarded following standard selection procedures at each telescope or group
of telescopes, which are based on scientific merits and feasibility.
Since 22 medium-sized telescopes are offered under the contract, and they are operated by
different legal entities / countries, specific criteria of eligibility differ from one telescope to
another. The procedure to apply for telescope time under this EC contract is to do it in
response to the different Announcements of Opportunity for observing time at each telescope.
Once the deadline for submission of proposals has been closed, Time Allocation Committees
(TACs), composed of experts of international reputation, evaluate the proposals received and
approve a ranked list for distributing the observing time available among the most highly
scored proposals.
The prime consideration of these TACs in making awards is scientific merit and technical
feasibility, taking into account the interests of the astronomical community as well as
scientific output from previous time awards. Teams compete on the basis of equal
opportunity. However, new users, young researchers and users from countries with no similar
research infrastructures are especially encouraged to apply for observing time.
Following EC guidelines, criteria of eligibility of the astronomers who want to benefit from
this Access Programme are mainly based on the country of origin of the user group (as
defined below), and the ownership of the telescope for which observing time is applied to (or
country of the entity/ies responsible for its operation). These criteria apply separately to each
telescope.
To be eligible to benefit from access to a particular telescope under the contract, a user
group 13 must satisfy the following conditions:
• both the user group leader and the majority of the users must come from Member
States or Associated States;
• both the user group leader and the majority of the users must come from a country
other than the country(ies) where the legal entity(ies) operating the infrastructure
is(are) established;
The first years of the programme were very oversubscribed so in order to prioritize
applications from actual external users (especially new users), i.e. users not having access by
right to these telescopes because of any formal agreement signed between their institutions
and the telescope operator, two other additional criteria were considered when awarding time
under the EC contract:
� the institution of affiliation of the user group leader and the majority of the
users shall not have access by right to the facility being applied to.
� in no case shall a user be eligible for travel and subsistence support to access
his/her own facility through this programme.
User groups meeting EC criteria of eligibility, and awarded telescope time by these TACs, are
informed by the Trans-national Access Office (located at Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias,
Spain) about this funding opportunity. They receive full information about how to apply for
travel and subsistence grants, how to get scientific and technical support to carry out their
observations, application forms, etc. Application forms and reports can be completed on-line.
13
User: means a researcher within a user group, including the user group leader. User group: means a research team of
one or more researchers given access to the infrastructure under the project. Each user group is led by a user group leader.
40 Contract [RII3-CT-2004-001566]
Annual Report