JCMT Peer Review Guidelines

Background

While “Regular” and “Large Program” applications for observing time on JCMT are assessed by the JCMT Time Allocation Committee (TAC), “Rapid Turnaround” calls use a peer review process. One member of each proposal is asked to review several of the other proposals received at the same time. By submitting a proposal, the PI (or their designated co-I) is committing to providing ratings and brief written assessments of these other proposals. Failure to provide this feedback before the indicated deadline will result in the proposal being removed from further consideration.

The proposal authors may delegate the ranking and assessment of the other proposals to a single member of their proposal. That person should be identified via the Hedwig interface used to specify the other details of the member list. If no delegate is specified, the reviewer will default to being the proposal creator. Changes to the designated reviewer may not be made after the proposal deadline.

Conflicts of Interest

Reviewers will not be required to provide reviews of proposals for which they have a significant conflict of interest. The reviewer is therefore presented with summary information about each proposal to be reviewed, and required to complete a short form for each proposal. Using this form, the reviewer should declare whether or not such a conflict of interest exists, and if so, the details of its nature. Assuming that no such conflict exists, the reviewer is then provided with access to the full proposal in question.

Peer Reviews

Each proposal should be reviewed to the best of the reviewer’s ability on the basis of the following criteria:

  • What is the overall scientific merit of the proposal, and is the proposal as a whole clear and scientifically well-justified?
  • Will the proposed observations achieve the stated scientific goals?
  • Is there any particular degree of urgency to the proposed observations?
  • Are there any other serious issues with the proposal?

Note that technical feasibility will be assessed separately by JCMT personnel.

The reviewer will also be required to provide an overall rating for each proposal, together with a self-assessment of their own expertise level in the proposal’s scientific area. These are specified via drop-down menus. Once all of these fields have been specified for a given proposal, the review can be submitted.