About the Proposal Selection Process
As the “Registered Institution” for the public neutron beamlines located at J-PARC, the functions of CROSS-Tokai are divided into two main areas. Namely:
- Proposal Selection, and
- User Support
As part of it’s Proposal Selection role, it is the responsibility of CROSS-Tokai to establish and take the advice of a Selection Committee comprised of members suitably qualified and/or experienced in relevant fields. To ensure that the Selection Committee can freely and fearlessly provide advice to CROSS-Tokai from an independent position, candidates for Selection Committee membership are carefully chosen from a range of professions and areas of expertise. Accordingly, with a membership that possesses a wide range of high level specialist expertise, it is one of the roles of the Selection Committee to provide unbiased and independent advice that gives integrity to and inspires confidence in the user selection process.
The Proposal Selection function of CROSS-Tokai varies slightly between the public and contract beamlines. For the public beamlines, CROSS-Tokai is responsible for the processing and selection of research proposals. For this purpose, the Proposal Evaluation Committee (PEC) and Expert Panels made up of Japanese and international experts have been formed under the Selection Committee. All the business and deliberations of the PEC and the Expert Panels will be carried out in English.
For contract beamlines, the role of CROSS-Tokai extends to the assessment, selection and establishment of the contract beamline facility as well as the management and selection of proposals that wish to make use of the contract beamlines. CROSS-Tokai has established under the Selection Committee a Contract Beamlines Evaluation Committee (CBEC) to assessess proposals to build new contract beamlines. The avice and recommedations of the CBEC will be submitted to the Selection Committee for consideration.
The Selection Committee may also from time to time establish Task Forces to consider and advise on particular matters that impact on facility use promotion aspects of CROSS-Tokai’s function.