A Charter for the JACoW Collaboration - How it Began

Proposed by the JACoW Team, January 2012

Introduction

JACoW, established in 1997, has become the most important open archive resource in the field of accelerators. The facilities and services provided cover a wide range of activities and are based on the goodwill of team members and support from accelerator institutes and conference series. With a number of the founding members approaching retirement and with limited resources, the JACoW team decided to look at the best way in which to ensure the continued success of JACoW.

This page gives background information about how the collaboration currently operates and presents some of the motivation for making the changes. The final section contains the proposed new charter.

Aims and Objectives

The aims and objectives of the JACoW Collaboration are fairly simple:

1. Publish high-quality sets of proceedings with access through the custom interface.
2. Provide long-term archival storage to ensure longevity and access to publication data.
3. Train and educate authors and editors.
4. Provide a repository of profiles.
5. Provide support for conference organisers.

The support for conference organisers comprises help and guidance for event organisation, help and guidance concerning IT systems for the conference, provision of tools like SPMS and the JACoW proceedings script package (JPSP), sharing of software licenses for proceedings preparation, and expert support for paper processing.

The JACOW Collaboration Today

Roles

Currently there are a few formal roles that have been defined for the collaboration - chair, deputy chair, coordinator, regional representatives (Asia, Europe, and North America), webmasters (Europe and Asia), SPMS regional support managers (Asia, Europe and North America), SPMS regional development managers and the SPMS repository manager. The team members comprise representatives of the member conferences (for the previous, current, and future events), the aforementioned officers, and a few co-opted experts. The JACoW Steering Committee is composed of the scientific chairs, or their representatives of the member conferences (again for the previous, current, and future events).

The chair and deputy chair manage the collaboration.

The coordinator maintains contact with the member conferences through the scientific chairs, or their representatives, and maintains the active list as the series evolve (current becomes past, etc.). The coordinator also organises the annual team meeting with the help of local support at the venue. This involves negotiation with the host institute and organisation of the social programme. It has been common practice for the coordinator to nominate and invite experts to provide support for paper processing at conferences.

Regional representatives were introduced in 2010 with a view to having some regional support for the activities of the collaboration – collecting ideas and suggestions from their region and presenting them to the collaboration; taking ideas and information from the Team back to stakeholders in the regions and so on (the term stakeholder is introduced here, but explained very late in the last paragraph of Aims of the Proposed Changes). Regional representatives should also help with the organisation of the annual team meeting in their region. Their activities have not yet been fully developed and defined.

The European webmaster receives and checks conference proceedings before publishing them on the JACoW website. This webmaster is also responsible for maintenance of the proceedings website. The Asian webmaster is responsible for a mirror copy of the European site and its maintenance.

SPMS regional support managers are responsible for the provision of SPMS instances in their regions. An SPMS instance is created in an Oracle system for each conference that wishes to use it. These managers create the instance and are available to give advice on the systems aspects of their use. The conference personnel are responsible for the data and use of the SPMS instance.

Most of the development of the SPMS has been done by Matt Arena (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, USA), but specific packages have been developed by other teams around the world and together with Matt these people form the regional SPMS development managers.

How it Works Today

The formal structure of the collaboration is based on the terms of reference and a set of boundary conditions for membership, which can be found at How to Join JACoW. In the terms of reference it is stated that the management of JACoW is the responsibility of the steering committee, and the implementation and operation is done by the team. The team (the technical experts) reports to the steering committee, which is composed of the decision makers of the member conferences. A number of conditions for membership are defined (e.g., adherence to the basic conditions for publication, a collaborative approach, sending editors to the annual team meeting, etc.), and the members of the steering committee and team are defined. In the terms of reference it also states that:

• The activities of JACoW are to be carried out in accordance with the terms of reference.
• It is the responsibility of the JACoW chair to communicate all proposals for change to the steering committee.
• Changes to the terms of reference must be approved by a simple majority of the steering committee members.
• The JACoW chair is proposed by the team, and the steering committee has to approve the nomination. The appointment for chair is for a three-year period.
• The JACoW Team reports to the steering committee through the JACoW chair. The JACoW Team is responsible for the execution of the tasks that are necessary to meet the objectives of the collaboration.

The Modus Operandi is also explicitly defined as:

• The JACoW Team reports to the steering committee through the JACoW chair.
• The steering committee must approve all changes to the organisation, membership, and operation of JACoW by simple majority.
• The steering committee and team should meet independently at least once per year.
• The JACoW Team is responsible for the execution of the tasks that are necessary to meet the objectives of the collaboration.

In practice things do not exactly follow this system: the steering committee is, by its nature, very far removed from the practical aspects of the work of the collaboration, and therefore the responsibility for management falls to the chair and other officers and members of the team.

Although team members have been responsible for certain activities these have not been formally defined and there is no formal channel for reporting/follow-up of activities. It has also become clear that there are more tasks that need to be carried out, like recording team decisions and follow-up of requested actions.

Although the two previous observations have not caused the collaboration to fail to meet its goals, there have been clear signs in recent times that the risk of failure is becoming greater and that something should be done now to remedy the situation.

The main areas of concern are the management of the collaboration, the management of research and development in the domain of electronic publication, and the decision-making process for the collaboration.

Meeting the Goals

To the majority of stakeholders it would appear that the collaboration is continuing to meet its goals because high-quality proceedings continue to be published on the website. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to provide the information and tools that are necessary for authors, editorial teams, and conference organisers. There is a constant work load concerning new software, new versions of standard software, and new operating systems--all of which the team has to follow and test to support authors and conferences. The work needs to be prioritised and coordinated to keep pace with developments and to distribute the work among more people.

Current Risks

There are some parts of the documentation for authors and conference staff which are obsolete or non-existent. If these are not fixed authors will continue to produce faulty documents and organisers will use more resources than necessary.

The collaboration has some software licenses which are available for use by member conferences. However, since these are for a fixed number of users, unless they are properly managed (i.e. tracked and uninstalled), there may be no licenses available for future conferences.

More effort is required concerning the dissemination of (meta)data from and about the papers (Web of Sciences, DOI, etc) in order to provide the information needed by institutes.

With the current structure there is a risk that knowledge and expertise will be lost from the collaboration because team members may only be around for three years.

Perhaps the most important risk is that if the team does not keep pace with developments in the technologies there will come a time when it will not be possible to produce papers suitable for publication on the website.

Finally, continuous efforts are required in the domains of copyright and long term archival if the future of the collaboration’s primary resource, the website, is to be assured.

Aims of the Proposed Changes

The main aim of the proposed changes is to introduce a structure which will facilitate the management of the collaboration and its activities and provide a broader channel for reporting. The changes are based on the introduction of a Board of Directors which will be responsible for decision making and for the management of the collaboration. Reporting will be made to the stakeholders, comprising JACoW users and authors as well as representatives of the conference series and institutes.

The basic conditions for conferences to join the collaboration should remain unchanged. The roles and activities of the various officers will be defined by the team and ratified by the board of directors. Experts from the team should meet at least once per annum, and conferences should still have to agree to sending the relevant staff to these meetings. The primary stakeholders are the institutes (paying their staff who are working for the JACoW collaboration) and the accelerator community, which uses JACoW. A reasonable sample of these people are present at the International Particle Accelerator Conferences, held annually; therefore, this appears to be a good time and place for the collaboration to report to the stakeholders.

Proposed Charter

Basic Organisation

• The collaboration comprises representatives of member conferences, the team, and the board of directors.
• An honorary position of president of the collaboration may be created if it is felt that this will be of benefit to the collaboration. In such a case, the board will invite the nominee to assume this position.
• Member conferences should nominate representatives for a rolling set of three conferences: the previous, current, and future. The change-over being at the point when the current conference has taken place.
• The team comprises a rolling set of editors from member conferences (previous, current, and future), co-opted experts, and JACoW officers. The list of JACoW officers is defined by the team and must include a chair, deputy, and regional representatives. The list of all positions will be published at the collaboration website. The chair and deputy(ies) may be selected from outside the team.
• The board of directors will be chaired by the JACoW chair and will comprise the directors, deputy Chair(s), JACoW coordinator, and regional representatives. The chair will have a vote on the board, and decisions will be reached by simple majority of votes cast by board members.

Membership

Applications for membership from conference series must be approved by the board of directors. Each conference applying for membership must agree to the basic requirements for publication (as defined on the collaboration website) and agree to contribute proceedings to the website for at least three consecutive conferences. Each conference must also agree to send the relevant people to the annual team meetings. Proposed changes to the basic requirements will be communicated to the series representatives, and an acknowledgement/response will be required.

Election of Officers

The JACoW team elects the chair and deputy Chair(s) by a simple majority of votes cast in a secret ballot. Nominations for officers can be made by team members or by the board of directors and should be sent to the coordinator. The coordinator will confirm that the nominees are willing to serve in the position for which they have been nominated. The officers to be elected are people for those offices named on the website and the board members. One person may serve in more than one office (e.g., a regional representative may also serve as coordinator). Elections will normally be held at the annual team meeting. In exceptional circumstances and when approved by the board, an electronic election organised by the coordinator could be held.

The board members and other named officers will serve mandates of up to three years, for a maximum of two consecutive mandates (six years consecutive, but may serve for another period of up to six consecutive years following a one-year break). The appointments will be made and reviewed by the team at the annual team meeting.

Modus Operandi

• It is the responsibility of the editors or the editorial board of the conference, or a person designated by the chair of the scientific programme committee of the relevant conference to prepare a set of proceedings for their conference that complies with JACoW requirements and to deliver them to the JACoW webmaster.
• The existence of the combined site (JACoW) does not detract from the rights of individual conference organisers to publish their proceedings on other web sites, storage media, or hard copies of their choice.
• The board of directors will be the decision-making body and will manage the collaboration. The board of directors will review the aims and objectives of the collaboration at least once per year.
• The team will meet at least once per year to review technical matters and to discuss administrative and operational aspects of the collaboration. Technical issues may be discussed in separate/break-out meetings.

Reporting

The collaboration will report annually to the stakeholders at an open meeting. The primary stakeholders are the institutes and the accelerator community that use JACoW. The chair will present a report on the collaboration’s activities during the year at the annual meeting, and the stakeholders can raise issues if they wish. Institutes will be invited to nominate a representative for JACoW, and this person will receive relevant information from the collaboration and a specific invitation to the annual stakeholders meeting.

Sanctions

The board of directors may decide to withdraw from publication or prevent the publication of a conference series if a conference fails to meet its obligations to the collaboration.