Feedback about the outcome of the review and allocation process will be provided to all Main Proposers and Principal Investigators for all proposals submitted in a specific cycle as soon as possible, typically 15–16 weeks after the deadline of the call for proposals.
At the same time, more specific information will be provided to users in order to prepare for the experiment, in particular:
- Submission of the A-form, generally 5 weeks before the start of the experiment (including registration of the experiment team, confirmation of the samples/substances used during the experiments, user funding in case of eligibility, and request for support for practical arrangements)
- Details about the general online safety training, mandatory for all users
- Information about the shipping and customs notifications concerning samples and other items needed for the experiment
A local contact familiar with the instrument setup will be assigned to coordinate support to the experiment.
The Main Proposer is responsible for collecting information, coordinating arrangements, and transmitting details about registration of the experiment team to European XFEL. An electronic A-form has to be submitted for approval 5 weeks before the start of the measurements, this is mandatory for accessing the facility.
Only scientists registered through the A-form will be admitted to the experiment.
For user experiments planned after 01 January 2025, the Main Proposer will be requested to submit a Beamtime Confirmation Form (BCF) in order to accept the beamtime and appoint the Experiment Data Contact in the user group. The appointed Experiment Data Contact will have the responsibility of interacting with EuXFEL for the development of the Data Management Plan of the experiment. The detailed description of the Experiment Data Contact Role is available in our Policies section.
Once the Beamtime Confirmation Form (BCF) has been submitted at the beamtime acceptance stage, the proposal will be exported to myMdC and the respective filesystem and logbook will be created well in advance of the start of the experiment, assuming that all required conditions are met and approvals by EuXFEL are in place.