Suggestions of the Proposal Review Panel for writing proposals

Please, divide the description of your proposal as follows:

1. Background
2. Motivation for the present proposal
3. Experimental plan
4. Explain why this work calls for access to Elettra or FERMI
5. References

The purpose for this information to be supplied is to:

• Tell us what you want to measure.

• Tell us why it is interesting and/or important. Just because something has not been done before does not mean it is worth doing now.

• If it involves unusual materials or familiar materials that are difficult to work with, tell us how you will get or prepare samples. Tell us if you have already prepared samples and/or surfaces at home. Do you already know other things about them ?

• Proponents are responsible of avoiding double submission. If the same proposal is submitted by members of the same group to different subpanels, it will be automatically assigned score 5.

• The proposals are for a six months period. Some proposals (only  for Elettra) are for a long program. Tell us how many shifts you believe you will need during the six months, how many for the entire program, and which part of the program will be attempted in the six months.

• Tell us why your proposed work requires a third generation storage ring such as Elettra. Just "higher resolution" is sometimes adequate, when we can guess why the higher resolution is necessary, but it is better to tell us why you need it. If it's not Elettra you need, but a particular feature of one of its beamlines, that's OK, but tell us.

• If you have had experience making the measurement you propose, mention it. (Lack of experience is not the handicap you may believe it is. The synchrotron and FEL radiation communities depend on new users.)

• Give some pertinent reference to the literature. A rule of thumb might be 5 references useful in helping a reader understand what you want to do and 5 references to previous work of yours, especially if it is pertinent to the proposal. Even those who have never used synchrotron or FEL radiation before may have a history of work on a material, phenomenon, or process.

• In many cases this can all be done on two pages without resorting to 9-point type and 1 mm margins.

• Please, along with your proposal, attach a document (WORD, PDF, etc.) in the "files attached" field in which the scientific case, i.e. topics 1 to 5, is coherently laid out.

• A resubmission of a proposal should be readable by itself. Do not refer back to your older proposal, except to tell us what you have done with any beam time you may have had from it and how you are going to take into account the PRP advice.

• If you had beam time previously, state briefly what was done with it.
• Keep your publications list updated in the VUO! The list will apppear at the bottom of your proposal form and it will be taken into account by the Elettra Proposal Review Panel.

Suggestions for protein crystallography proposals:

• Are crystals available and in reasonable quantity?

• Is the diffraction of the crystals characterized? (diffraction power, unit cell, dimensions)?

• How is phasing to be done? If by replacement, is this reasonable? If by heavy atom methods, are derivatives available?

• Have cryogenic conditions been established?

• What is the biological significance of the problem and is it well posed?

• Will the biological goals be significantly furthered by the award of beamtime or can the questions be answered in the home lab?

• What progress was achieved on any previously awarded beamtime?