Joint Proposals

Joint proposals are single proposals submitted to multiple National Time Allocation Committees (NTACs). During the International TAC process, the separate components that have been individually technically and scientifically assessed by NTACs are merged to form a single proposal. The merged proposal is placed in the queue at an initial position corresponding to the time-weighted mean ranking of the individual national assessments. All joint proposals are discussed by the ITAC. Following execution, time is charged to the partner countries in proportion to their contributions to the merged program.

Starting in semester 2005A, all joint proposals must be submitted using the Gemini Phase I Tool (PIT) even if the proposal involves partners that offer other submission mechanisms for non-joint proposals. No other proposal form or process can be used for joint proposals. Joint proposals must follow the format, length and DEADLINE rules of the Principal Investigator's partner country (that is, the partner country of the institution to which the PI is affiliated).

The PIT has been modified so that submission to all of the partners takes place automatically. All of the National Gemini Offices have established servers to receive and process your application directly from the PIT. In the PIT "submit" page the intended partners are selected by checking the relevant boxes and you must specify the time (and, optionally, the minimum time) requested from each partner. It is strongly recommended that the minimum time fields be used, and that the total minimum time (sum of the minimum time per partner) be equal to the minimum acceptable time allocation. This number is used by the ITAC to determine if it is useful to schedule a joint program which is not supported by all of the partners (a common occurence).

As with non-joint proposals, each proposal must have a Principal Investigator who is used as the primary contact by Gemini staff. (e.g. the PI will receive Phase II instructions from Gemini, automatic notifications from the Observing Database etc). The PIT "submit" page allows others from the list of PI and co-Is to be identified as the National Lead Scientist; each partner may have a different national lead if desired. The national lead scientist is used as the point of contact by National Gemini Office and National TAC support staff during Phase I only.

When the proposal is submitted it is sent to all of the specified partners. Following submission, a pop-up window will report the status of each component; please note the national proposal reference number(s) assigned or any error messages that are reported. A check mark next to each partner in PIT also indicates success or failure in submission. If one or more of the components fail to be submitted, for example due to unavailability of the network or backend server at the national office, they can be re-sent by the applicants at a later time. (The successfully-submitted components are not re-sent, and the partner-specific items are not changeable by default, although you can reset the flags and re-submit the proposal in its entirety if necessary). If you experience a problem with submission, please contact your National Gemini Office support staff in the first instance.

The HTML summary page lists the investigating team (PI and co-Is), national lead scientists, the partner(s) to which the proposal is submitted, the separate time requests and the total time. At the time of submission, the national lead scientist and partner entry in the summary table are highlighted in the version of the proposal received by each partner and seen by the NTACs. This highlighting is not seen in the 'master' version as seen by the applicants. 

Last update Sept 1, 2006; B. Rodgers