So I have a trip to Melbourne on Monday for a beamline proposal access committee (PAC) meeting to discuss the recent submissions for the next round of beamtime on the x-ray diffraction beamline.
I've been on the PAC for a little under a year so I've come to know its inner workings. Last December when I was in Melbourne for the Australian Synchrotron users' meeting, the chair of the PAC admitted that as chair he had control over who the reviewers for each proposal would be, so to bump new users up the list he would assign their proposals to 'soft' reviewers and more experienced users, like myself, to harsher reviewers.
Which is all fine if you get the time. But it made me a little mad then, and especially now that some of the scores are coming in.
Some of the comments I've received are:
Proposal 1
"The proposal represents quality science, with potential for publication in respected journals, but it is not really a novel and exciting application of synchrotron radiation... “Precise experimental conditions” should have already been determined by some of the “extensive prior electrochemical testing” given that the proposal has been carried over from 2009-1 cycle! More effort should have been made to complete and include these data... Synchrotron radiation is necessary for the work, but although being up with contemporary science, it is not a completely novel and exciting application of synchrotron radiation. The team is a good one, but the outcomes of previous synchrotron radiation experiments are mediocre at best, or poorly portrayed – perhaps new criteria have been applied in the current round of reviewing?"
Proposal 2
"...However, whether or not the time resolution afforded by the microstrip detector is necessary, based on the timeframes over which the experiments are expected to take, is debatable. A lab instrument incorporating a PSD might do the job adequately. Track record - no description given about outcomes of previous Australian Synchrotron experiments. Also, no publications arising from four AS allocations in 2008, so no basis on which to give a score above 0."
If we were allowed the right of response (which we're not) I would say to the reviewer on proposal 1, there's a 600 word limit! As for outcomes being 'mediocre'... well, see below.
and to reviewer on proposal 2, the four allocations were not all for this work, you dork. Oh, and a lab source? Are you joking? We couldn't get the information needed from the Stanford synchrotron, how are we going to get it with a lab source? Idiot. No description, because - oh yes, there it is again - 600 word limit. Fool.
Still, the overwhelming message I'm getting is that it's going to be hard to get time in the near future without publishing. Which itself is hard because often you don't get all the info you need in the first visit, also most of the work I have done has been with PhD students, who are more concerned about writing their thesis than writing papers - the only measure of 'success'.
Contrast these comments I received, with some others.
This about one of the chair's proposals:
"XX has a track record second to none..."
And this about someone whose beamtime was cut short last time:
"This proposal should not have needed to be resubmitted, if they lost a substantial portion of time resulting little data being collected it should have been passed over to the next round."
In my proposal 1 I wrote that it was granted time in the last round but because of a student's visa issue we could not take it up - and got slammed for not having done more lab work.
It is so frustrating. But I don't know whether to complain or not. Or who to. I guess I'll wait and see if the scores turn out to be a problem.
I guess I could always do what other people do, and get one of your collaborators to submit the proposal so it doesn't go against your name. But that's cheating, isn't it? {sigh}
