JCMT Note from the Director

There were three main items of policy that resulted from the Board. These all had to do with telescope time and so I took them to the ITAC meeting in December for further discussion. The ITAC approved all of the new policy with one or two clarifications that have been incorporated in what follows.

The Board approved a new policy for awarding guaranteed observing time for common user instrumentation building teams. The time should be linked to the complexity of the project with different awards depending on whether the instrument was defined as small, medium, or large. This would result in allocations of 5, 10 and 15 shifts of guaranteed time in appropriate weather for the science undertaken by the instrument concerned. The time should be scheduled over a minimum of two semesters and would be top-sliced in the same manner as Engineering and Commissioning time. A scientific case would have to be submitted, to be adjudicated by the ITAC, and the scientific objectives must come from a subset of the original science case for the instrument (where appropriate).

Instruments would be considered on a case by case basis but it was agreed that ACSIS, HARP-B, and Champ-D and SCUBA2 would all be considered to be large projects.

The Board endorsed the Director JCMT's proposals concerning large observing programmes, which were distilled from the response of the community and the Advisory panel. These are listed below.

Large programmes are those that have the potential to produce the highest quality, highest impact science, and if needed they should be awarded large blocks of time when required, even at the expense of other (lesser quality) programmes. The TAGs should be cognisant of the strategic needs of the JCMT and the Board will support them in allocating large slots of time to such challenging programmes. Scientific excellence should remain the sole determining factor for time allocation and this is definitely not to suggest that only large programmes can deliver scientific excellence.

These large programmes should either have long-term, or starred status and it is a requirement for continuation that they must report back to the TAG and ITAC in some detail at the end of each semester. The TAGs need to be made very aware of what precise progress has been made, what observations remain, and when the results are expected to be submitted for publication. This information will be closely monitored. Furthermore, to strengthen the link between the scientific progress of these programmes using the JCMT and the JCMT Board, the ITAC report to the Board will highlight these programmes and describe them and their progress in much more detail than is the current case. In terms of allocation, the large programmes would be split over not less than two consecutive semesters so as not to monopolise most, or all, of the high-frequency weather during any given semester.

Regarding the issue of 'Key Programmes' for the JCMT, there is strong user resistance to the 'top-down' approach. The current allocation system has the potential to deliver the aims of Key Programmes, they have had a chequered history at other facilities and should not be pursued further for the JCMT.

The Board agreed that the default for release of astronomical data for open access from all observing programmes should be one year following the end of the semester in which the observations were taken. However, users would be given the option of requesting this be withheld in special cases. Examples of special cases are programmes that are continuing and release of a subset would have a significant impact on the outcomes of the overall prgramme, and student thesis material.

This policy comes into effect beginning semester 00A. Therefore, in principle, on 1 February 2000 ALL data from projects up to, and including, semester 98B will become accessible to the public from the CADC data archive. However, due to the short notice of this change, the date will be delayed by one month to Feb 29th. Any request for an exception to this rule must be given as a written case by the Principal Investigator and submitted to the Director JCMT before February 21st in order to give us time to withhold the data. For future semesters, PIs will be reminded approximately one month prior to the end of the semester that their previous data will be released. While this particular announcement is aimed primarily at SCUBA data, none of which has so far been released, nevertheless, the policy applies to all data taken at the JCMT, including visiting instruments where the data resides on our archive.

Unfortunately, due to constraints on support staff at the JAC we cannot offer support for users of the archive. Users should in the first instance contact the PI for information regarding the data.

Professor Ian Robson