Summary Notes of the Fifth Meeting of the JACoW Board of Directors

27 January, 2014

Present: Ivan Andrian, Matt Arena, Jan Chrin, Cathy Eyberger (audio), Christine Petit-Jean-Genaz, Volker Schaa, John Poole (joins right after the decision of point 2 below)
Absent: Todd Satogata, Yongbin Leng

1. Approval of JBoDM#4 Summary Notes

According to the prioritisation of SPMS feature requests, Christine asks for precise timelines together with priorities for the following features:

  • Multiple programme codes
  • Stakeholders – lists at Website
  • Templates

With the above the Notes of the last meeting are agreed by all the presents.

2. Status of the JACoW collaboration: new requests to join JACoW, fail to publish etc.

The Symposium on Accelerator Physics (SAP) requested to join JACoW.]] SAP is a three-day event, with contributions from China, the US, and many other countries.
SAP 2014 will be the 12th Symposium in the series. It corresponds to JACoW requirements, and the organizers pledge to respect JACoW boundary conditions.

The BoD approves this new member.
Action: Christine will inform SAP of the Board’s decision.

Some mention had previously bee made of further two events:

  • Accelerator Reliability Workshop
  • Workshop on Accelerator Operation

Volker mentions that these two series applied tentatively to join, but they do not correspond to our usual JACoW Requirements relating to content since they publish mostly slides. He feels however that simply storing the files might be useful.

The other event mentioned by Todd in previous JBoDMs apparently has lead to nothing.

Some discussion follows on "outreach" and "extension of JACoW", i.e. non-conference proceedings for publication at the JACoW site, outside of the search engine.

Volker would publish workshop slides as "Archived" work. He doesn't want to force this, but would like to think about adding an Archival extension to the JACoW.org site.

Christine feels that this is deviating from JACoW's traditional goals, i.e. to publish conference proceedings, with however a decision taken a few years ago to publish symposia and special events. There was never a decision in favour of publishing "archival material", which is the case for InDiCo.

Any further discussion or decisions on this issue are postponed to a future BoD Meeting.

3. Team Meeting 2013 Follow up

3.1 Next Templates for JACoW/IPAC14

Christine reports on IPAC'14 SPC/3, disappointed that the proposal from Ivan was not adopted by the Team. They propose to offer an extra page for references, and to bring the issue to the Stakeholders Meeting in Dresden.

Volker mentions that he has already prepared something in Latex which separates header/body/references, i.e. the template is separated into three sections. However, the header information (title, authors, abstract) are in LaTeX, and do not come from SPMS, which was the aim of the new proposal.

Ivan recalls the lead up to the new templates - essentially to reach a new entry of references, building references when the publications are in JACoW, and also for major journals.

Ivan is in favour of addressing the issue with the Stakeholders in Dresden.

Jan proposes we keep the same template. We improve however on formatting of references. And we have a new upload page which ensures coherence between papers and SPMS meta data.

Discussion is going in the direction of leaving the templates as they are, improving however on the number of examples of how to write references.

The new upload procedure would improve contents of proceedings metadata.

Conclusion: Agreed statement for the IPAC'14 SPC.

The BoD supports the creation of a new cover page for upload of contributions to IPAC'14. This new screen would call on authors (via a screen showing data in SPMS) to:

  1. check/edit the title of the paper to be uploaded
  2. edit/agree that the abstract in SPMS matches the abstract in the paper
  3. check, add/delete authors in SPMS such that SPMS matches the authors in the paper

Some modifications to the syntax used until now may be necessary to distinguish between the "abstract" submitted to the SPC at the time of the call for papers, and the "abstract" which is at the beginning of the contribution to the proceedings.

The JBoD notes that IPAC 14 may decide (or has decided) to add an optional 4th page for references only. It will make an effort to improve the formatting and description of references in the templates in time for IPAC'14.

IPAC can certainly decide it wants to modify its templates to have

  1. a cover page drawn from SPMS,
  2. a content matter
  3. separate references page.

At some point the implications will need to be discussed by the BoD, and the feasibility will need to be reported to the Stakeholders.

Actions: modify the SPMS (Matt) for new pre-upload process. Modify the upload scripts (Ivan) for the first page automatic generation to be presented to the authors for checking purposes.

3.2. References in abstracts and in paper

There has been some confusion in the past on what was meant by "references in abstracts". Some understood it was in the SPMS abstract submission page where only footnotes are allowed (but in practice where references [1] are entered instead of *, ** etc., and others were referring to the JACoW templates where the abstract at the beginning of the paper contains a mention of a reference [1].

Once this issue has been understood by all, some progress can be made.

Christine and John support the view there is no place for a reference in an abstract, either upon abstract submission in SPMS, or in the introduction to the paper in the contribution to the proceedings.

Following discussion, there is general agreement on this point. The template needs to be corrected to remove the [1], and perhaps some mention could be made that references should not appear in abstracts in contributions to the proceedings.

When uploading the paper we are asking to confirm the abstract text in the paper.

We need to mentally distinguish between the synopsis at abstract submission time and the abstract which appears at the beginning of the paper.

Decisions:

  • agreement to remove the reference from the abstract in the template
  • change some wording on abstract submission page in SPMS to highlight the concepts of synopsis and abstract (same data field, however, in the database, only two different meanings at two different points in time).
  • upon file upload, when the author should review the abstract, it will be clear that this is the definitive information, metadata for the proceedings. The author will be responsible for this information.

3.3 JACoW-Indico and resources request to CERN

Ivan proposes that JACoW writes to the CERN Director of Physics (Sergio Bertolucci) to formally request effort from CERN for the SPMS/InDiCo development, in particular with respect to manpower (draft mail circulated to the BoD).

John feels it's a reasonable approach, however dropping the mention of "HEP" in favour if "the whole accelerator community". Freddy Bordry, Director of Accelerators, should be in copy on the letter.

Action: Volker will make the changes in the text, prepare the letter and send it to Bertolucci and Bordry.

4. Style of references: requests for published standard

In response to a question from Christine, Volker agrees to produce a list of formatted references for all major journals, to be pasted into our templates. Volker has already prepared something for the LaTeX Templates. Cathy is willing to do the same for the Word Templates.

After several requests from the community to publish a standard to reference JACoW papers, Volker agrees on compiling a dedicated page on the JACoW.org website by March 10.

Actions: Templates modification, website update (by Volker, deadline March 10)

5. Mailing lists and accounts for JACoW.org

The BoD is in favour.

Actions: Ivan will create the new mailing lists and mailboxes for JACoW memers

5. Bids for JTM2014 - next actions to be defined

Christine reports that the two bids are nearing completion. For Korea there are two possible venues, with a good breakdown of costs. For Melbourne the initial bid was too complicated, showing everything offered, but not pinpointing what our hosts prefer/propose to the team. She now has a single page overview, but the breakdown of costs is still missing.

The question of travel costs is raised. However, since this is only a minor fraction of the total cost (hotel accommodation, per diem, registration fee), the overall cost should be also kept in mind.

Following discussion it is decided that as soon as we have the two complete bids, we will publish the bids and invite the whole team to vote.

Actions: Ivan will publish the bids on the website, Christine will coordinate the communication and voting via email with the team

6. Other possible business

Christine asks for the possibility to have two new fields in SPMS profiles: gender and title. The question of gender is raised frequently when the SPC is deciding oral presentations in order to have an eye to gender distribution.

Matt takes note for his "to do" list.