How to Use NOAO's Web Proposal Form

We provide four options for proposal submission:

Web submission (from form). The proposal may be completed through the Web form attaching figures and/or text as noted in the instructions. The "Submit Proposal" button on the Web form takes you to a final page that checks the proposal - the proposal may then be submitted from this page for consideration for observing time, or the investigator can choose to go back and modify information before again pressing the "Submit Proposal" button. But once the final "submit" button has been pressed the proposal can no longer be modified.
Web submission (file upload). Once the required general, investigator and run information have been completed on the Web form, the "Email LaTeX File" button becomes activated, and you can request that the partially completed LaTeX template be emailed back to you for editing locally. The completed LaTeX proposal form and any figures may then be submitted by attaching them to the webform at http://www.noao.edu/noaoprop/submit/
Email submission. Once the required general, investigator and run information have been completed on the Web form, the "Email LaTeX File" button becomes activated, and you can request that the partially completed LaTeX template be emailed back to you for editing locally. The completed LaTeX proposal form and any figures may then be submitted by email to noaoprop-submit@noao.edu (each in a separate email message following the instructions in the LaTeX template). NOTE: The email submission option is deprecated. Please use file upload at http://www.noao.edu/noaoprop/submit/
Gemini Phase-I Tool (PIT) submission. Investigators who are applying only for time on one of the Gemini telescopes (no Keck, MMT, Magellan, Hale, CTIO or KPNO observing runs) may alternatively choose to use the Gemini Phase I Tool (PIT) to prepare their observing proposals. The PIT is available from the Gemini Observatory at http://www.gemini.edu/?q=node/11083. Gemini proposals prepared using the PIT will be reformatted into standard.

We provide below some general guidelines for using this Web proposal form.
Getting Started
- Read the documentation on the side-panel of the home page of the Web proposal form. Be sure to check Recent Changes to be aware of any changes to instrumentation, procedures, etc., since the proposal files were frozen.
- For newcomers to the NOAO proposal process, reading our sample proposal available as a PostScript file or through the proposal home page by simply clicking on the "Continue" button may be a good place to start. The sample proposal contains hints about how to write a proposal and what the TAC looks for in each of the sections.
- If you are starting a new proposal, enter a username and password in the boxes provided along with an email address to which Web requests may be sent. Enter your password again in the second box to verify that you typed what you think you did. Select "standard", "survey", "cntac" or "maryland" for the proposal type - note that most investigators will be submitting "standard" proposals unless a letter of intent was submitted earlier for a survey proposal, or unless you are requesting Chilean National time at CTIO (these proposals will be reviewed by the Chilean National TAC) or U. Maryland time at KPNO (reviewed by the Maryland TAC). Pressing the Continue button will then bring up a blank proposal form.
  We store your proposal information on our local disk in a directory defined by the "username". For each observing period this must be a unique name for each proposal.
- You may log back onto the system as often as you wish. You are welcome to share your username/password with collaborators on the same proposal - we recommend that only one person edit the proposal at the same time however.
- The "Options" button on the front page of the Web proposal form allows you two options, following the login procedure on the home page:
  1. You may import an existing NOAO LaTeX proposal from your local disk into the Web proposal form. Because the relation between an older form and the new one is not necessarily one-to-one, you should examine closely the Web proposal that is created for any misinformation.
  2. You may also make a copy of an existing Web proposal from the current or previous semesters. The only way you can change the "proposal type" of an existing proposal is by using this option.
- Forget your username and/or password? Check with us at noaoprop-help@noao.edu and we may be able to help you.

There are several common action buttons on each Web page. Each of these buttons will save the current information entered on that page before proceeding.

The "Run LaTeX" button will construct a LaTeX version of your proposal, run "latex", and report back any LaTeX errors so they can be fixed - we have tried to make these errors more understandable to the user.

The "View/Download Files" button will run "latex" and "dvips", and then give you options for downloading various files associated with your proposal: your LaTeX proposal, the style file, the PostScript version of your proposal, and a PDF version of your proposal (if a PDF or PostScript "helper" application has been defined with your browser you may also preview these files directly).

The "Email LaTeX File" button will construct a LaTeX version of your proposal and email it back to you at the email address entered on the proposal home page.

The "Email PS File" is similar to the "View/Download Files" button except the PostScript version of your proposal is emailed to you at the email address entered on the proposal home page. Since the PostScript version can often be too large for some mailboxes, we recommended the "View/Download Files" option as the better choice for retrieving a copy of your proposal.

The "Check Proposal" button will check the full proposal for obvious LaTeX problems as well as missing and required proposal information. A "Save and Verify" button on each page will report suspected problems for the current page.

The "Submit Proposal" button will check your proposal for any missing fields of information and any LaTeX errors. You can then submit your proposal, along with any figures, to the NOAO proposal queue from this page. You will receive an email message (sent to the email address for Web correspondence that was entered on the proposal home page) from the proposal queue that your proposal, and any figures, have been received as well as a proposal number to be used for further correspondence with the NOAO Observing Proposal Office. Watch for this email reply - if you do not receive it within 10-15 minutes, let us know right away (noaoprop-help@noao.edu).

LaTeX's Role in your Proposal

LaTeX still plays an important role in the NOAO proposal process. Besides being a common link between the Web and email submission process, LaTeX also provides the investigator with authoring tools such as special characters, symbols, and formatted equations and, equally as important, produces a nice looking document for the Panel Review Committees and Telescope Allocation Committee (TAC) to read for reviewing/grading. Thus, the information that is entered on the various pages of the Web proposal form will be used to construct a LaTeX proposal, similar to one that is returned to you via the "Email LaTeX File" button on the Web proposal form.

Text entries on the Web proposal form must be LaTeX-compatible. See our LaTeX Pointers page for a summary of LaTeX commands and examples that may be helpful for preparing your proposal.
Check out the symbols page for already defined symbols and special characters before defining your own.
If your proposal for Web submission includes figures, do not embed the figures as part of any of the text fields in your proposal. We will include any figures and captions at the end of the "Scientific Justification" section of your LaTeX proposal, calling them Figure 1, Figure 2 or Figure 3, as we build your LaTeX proposal.
The constructed LaTeX proposal should run through "latex" without any errors before it is submitted. The "Run LaTeX" button will report back any LaTeX errors so they can be fixed - we have tried to make these errors more understandable to the user.
Options are available to view either the PostScript and/or PDF versions of the proposal so that the author will know how the printed proposal will appear to the committees during the review and allocation processes. If you do not have a PostScript or PDF reader defined as a "helper" application for your browser the files can be downloaded so you can view or print them locally. An option is also available to have the PostScript version returned by email.

Figures

Up to three figures (and up to two figure files per figure) may be submitted with your proposal. The figure files must be well-formed Encapsulated PostScript files. If you are using the Web form for submission the figure files must be "attached" files, a feature of Netscape 2.0 or later compatible browsers. (It may not be practical to "attach" figure files that are larger than 1 Mb.) If you do not have the "attach" option with your browser and your proposal will contain figures, then please do not submit your proposal via the Web form. We do not have any way to handle a "mixed" (both email and Web) submission. However, you can prepare your proposal using the Web-based form, have the LaTeX version emailed back to you when it is done, edit the LaTeX form entering the appropriate figure information, and then submit through the email submission process. Email submission instructions for both template file and figures are in the LaTeX template.

Some hints for figure submission using the Web form are noted below.

Do not embed the figures as part of any of the text fields in your proposal. We will include any figures and captions at the end of the "Scientific Justification" section of your LaTeX proposal, calling them Figure 1, Figure 2 or Figure 3, as appropriate. We will compute a new "BoundingBox" for each figure. If you choose to have your figure rotated, we will do that and then recompute a new "BoundingBox". We will automatically scale your figure files but you may adjust this scaling factor (single figures only) to improve the appearance and layout of the printed copy which you can view/print as a PostScript or PDF file.

Each figure may include up to two PostScript files which we will place side-by-side in the figure with a single caption. You will be able to rotate these figure files but the "scale" option will be ignored.

It may not be practical to "attach" figure files that are larger than 1 Mb. If all figures combined exceed 10Mb check to be certain your proposal was indeed submitted (you should get an email message verifying your submission along with a proposal number within 10-15 minutes after submission). If you suspect problems contact us at noaoprop-help@noao.edu.

Help, as well as any comments and/or suggestions, may be directed to noaoprop-help@noao.edu

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