Policies

The following was agreed in Jan 2012.

Data rights

Members of the collaboration can propose (to Robert and Martin as co-ordinators) to take responsibility for the reduction of particular datasets (see Targets). If someone reduces a dataset to the point of providing final data products as described in the proposal, they get first refusal on writing a single-object or small-sample paper that uses that dataset. Once a substantial number of datasets is fully reduced, there will be an option to propose papers involving those without doing any further reduction. We expect that at the end of the project there will be full-sample papers to be written broadly round the topics of the original working groups in the proposal, and that those will be led by the people named on the proposal.

Membership

Everyone on the original legacy proposal is a 'full' member of the collaboration for these purposes, and their PhD students and postdocs can be added as 'associate' members. (If you have a student or postdoc who wants to work on the data, let Martin know so that he/she can be added to the Members list.) The only difference between 'associate' and 'full' members is that associate members lose their membership on the termination of their PhD or postdoctoral work.

New full members of the collaboration who aren't students or postdocs of existing members can be added if nominated by someone already in the collaboration and if the other members agree; they will then be able to propose to do work and write papers on equal terms with existing members. Note that this does not preclude involving non-members of the collaboration in data reduction and as co-authors on papers -- our feeling is that you should be able to do that freely. However, non-members cannot lead papers or data reduction efforts, and will not have access to the archive of reduced datasets.

Publication

Papers written by members of the collaboration about legacy data must be circulated to the collaboration and there will be an opportunity for all members to become authors by providing (useful) comments. In addition, Robert and Martin, as co-ordinators, may ask to be authors by virtue of having written the proposals (i.e. without having to pass some threshold for whether our comments on a paper are useful), and the original reducer of any individual dataset used in a paper has the same right. We expect that all members of the collaboration will have the right to be authors on the final 'full-sample' papers.

We do not expect to have significant clashes between authors (i.e. people wanting to write the same papers) but in the event of such conflict the co-ordinators will mediate. If you think there is any likelihood of a conflict with another member's publication, please check.

Proposed papers should be added to the publications page and, when a draft is available, it should be uploaded there.