The User Office received 279 new General User Proposals (GUPs) and 421 Beam Time Requests (BTRs) for the 2015-2 running cycle. All the proposals have now been processed by the User Office. Users submitting new proposals should have received an email inviting them to login to ALSHub and check the proposal PDF which will be sent to reviewers.
The ALS Proposal Study Panel (PSP) and ALS Division Deputy for Science Steve Kevan provide oversight for the review process. We are often asked about the review process and when notifications will be sent. We hope the following timeline and description will be helpful:
| Date | Activity |
| March 13 | Start beamline scientist feasibility checks. |
| March 9-13 | Initial automated assignment of reviewers followed by manual adjustments to assign up to four external reviewers per proposal. |
| March 18 | Start the external review process. |
| March 25 | PSP members emailed to start their reviews. |
| April 17 | Deadline for completion of external review process. |
| April 20-22 | Checks on review outcomes for score consistency and comments identifying problems. |
| April 23-24 | PSP meeting when the final score is assigned to each proposal and the likely cutoff score is identified for each beamline. |
| April 24-28 | User Office uses final scores to produce allocation sheets for each beamline. The allocation sheets list all new GUPs and BTRs sorted by score. |
| April 28-May 7 | Allocation meetings for each beamline or technique area involving the beamline scientist(s), user office staff and oversight from the ALS Division Deputy for Science. Each proposal, starting from the top of the sorted list, is assigned beam time until no beam time is left. The cutoff score is compared with that from the PSP, to check for consistency. |
| May 11-15 | Users will be notified to login to ALSHub to view the outcome of each proposal and the reviewer and PSP comments. |
| May 13-June 30 | Liaison between beamline scientists and users to produce a schedule for each beamline. |
User Office staff, in particular Adriana Reza (proposal coordinator) and Sue Bailey, are available throughout this process to answer user queries and help you. Do not hesitate to contact us for advice, or login to ALSHub to check on the progress of your proposals.