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New Time Allocation Procedures (1Mar93) (from CTIO, NOAO Newsletter No. 33, 1 March 1993) We have made a number of changes in the way that time allocation on the CTIO telescopes will be done in the future, starting with second semester 1993 (i.e., those proposals due in March). These are outlined below: Referees Abolished As recommended by both the Users' Committee (see report above) and by the Observatories Visiting Committee, the system of external reviewers has been abolished. Instead, the TAC will explicitly discuss all proposals submitted. Furthermore, an individual TAC member will be assigned to lead evaluation and discussion for each proposal submitted on the two largest telescopes (4-m and 1.5-m). This general procedure is intended to be similar to that followed by KPNO. As a result, however, written scientific evaluations can not be routinely provided for all proposals submitted to CTIO, but will be available on request. These will be based on the evaluation notes of the TAC members, and on the results of the discussion of the proposal. Staff technical evaluations will continue to be provided. Proposal Submission A few people are continuing to use old versions of the time request forms. Although we have threatened repeatedly not to accept the old forms, this time we really mean it. You must use the January 1991 version. E-mail ctiosked if you don't have a copy, or obtain the form via anonymous ftp. (The file is on ctios1 in pub/ctioforms/ctioform.tex.) People who nevertheless use the 1988 or 1989 forms (or worse yet, make up their own version!) will be contacted, if possible, and asked to resubmit on the correct form. We will also be providing an automatic reply to all e-mail sent to ctiosked during the months of March and September. If you send your proposal in via Internet and don't get a response within 24 hours, send an inquiry to ctiosked, or else a second copy. In the latter case, label it clearly as a second copy in the subject line of the e-mail header. We will continue to acknowledge receipt of proposals by ordinary mail as well. Note that the automatic reply only indicates that we received mail from you, not that we could print it out or found it problem-free. Some other remarks: Faxed proposals remain unacceptable. Also, we still have not gotten Postscript files to print out 100% reliably, and so are still not in a position to accept proposals sent in this form. We hope to be able to do so in the future, as there is no way at present to send figures by e-mail. Bob Williams, Jay Elias, Nick Suntzeff
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