sPHENIX Institutional Board

[Gunther M Roland <rolandg AT mit.edu>]

Dear IB members,  

Based on suggestions we have received, and as we discussed at the last General Meeting, we are planning to organize the upcoming collaboration meeting differently than previous meetings. This will include extended discussion time for important collaboration issues as we enter the final phase of construction and the new phase of commissioning. A draft agenda can be found at:

https://indico.bnl.gov/event/12086/

Several of these issues fall under the purview of the IB and are scheduled to be discussed in an extended IB meeting taking the entire morning of day 2 of the meeting. These include:

- an update from the bylaws committee and discussion

- continuation of the discussion on evolution of the collaboration structure

- beginning of discussion on membership, authorship and service work/shift requirements, as well as multi-experiment membership

For the latter issue, we will provide time for short contributions from the IB. It would be helpful to hear about experience related to this topic in other collaborations, in particular regarding authorship for incoming and exiting graduate students and postdocs.

For reference, this is what the current bylaws say about collaboration membership: "Scientists, engineers and students making a significant contribution to the sPHENIX collaboration are eligible to be members of the Collaboration. Members in good standing are those individuals who are associated with an sPHENIX institution and who have contributed significantly to the sPHENIX experiment. 

All individual members should actively participate in the scientific and technical work of the Collaboration"

As always, the meeting will be open to all collaborators, but we also encourage the IB members to discuss these issues with their group beforehand.

Best,

Gunther and Dave