GALFA Consortium Guidelines

The "GALFA Consortium" is a group of individuals interested in galactic astronomy programs using the Arecibo L-Band Focal Plane Array (ALFA) and who are committed to coordinating efforts to the extent possible in order to maximize science return and program efficiency. Membership in the GALFA Consortium is open to all interested parties irrespective of their institutional affiliation, career level, expertise or scientific background.

"Consortium projects" are programs for the use of ALFA that are significantly greater in scope than typical Arecibo observing programs and fall in the domain of galactic astronomy. Consortium projects are undertaken by teams of individuals (the "project team") who are committed to contributing in concrete but diverse ways to efforts associated with the consortium projects. The leader of a project team is the observing project principal investigator.

The GALFA "Coordinating Committee" consists of representatives of GALFA Consortium projects that have been granted telescope time or those in the development stage that have been endorsed by the GALFA Consortium. The Coordinating Committee is tasked with providing leadership to the GALFA Consortium overall as well as advocating and coordinating GALFA interests with NAIC and with the other ALFA science consortia. The representative of each team will be chosen by a vote of all active members of that team.

Additional at-large members of the Coordinating Committee, approved by the team leaders, may be added to provide balance, subject to endorsement by a majority vote of the consortium.

At least one member of the Coordinating Committee must be from a U.S. institution. If no team leader is from a U.S. institution, an at-large member will be added to the Coordinating Committee to fulfill that role.

The Coordinating Committee will further organize itself as needed to accomplish its goals.

Membership in a project team entitles an individual to membership in the GALFA Consortium but not vice versa. An individual must contribute to a project to be a project team member

It is understood that the level and nature of a project team member’s commitment may vary widely according to an individual's circumstances and expertise. Efforts may include diverse tasks such as development of software and algorithms, conduct of theoretical or numerical studies or complementary observations, survey management, development of educational or outreach materials, etc. The specification of a member’s commitment and return in terms of team membership, authorship on publications, data/software/tool access, etc., is left to each project team.

The following guidelines are strongly suggested to apply in general within each GALFA project team:

1. Initial team membership should be kept as open as possible. However, each individual should specify his/her potential contribution to a project in order to be considered as a team member when the team is formed.
2. An "active member" is anyone who has lived up to his/her annual commitment to a project team. Commitments in terms of contribution and level of effort should be agreed upon annually by the team member and the team leader.
3. Members can be added to a team by agreement of a majority vote of the team upon request to the team leader who will work with the new member to specify his/her level of commitment.
4. In rare circumstances, team membership can be withdrawn if a person does not fulfill his/her commitment (or for other extraordinary reasons) for a period exceeding one year. The individual will be contacted and notified in writing by the team leader of the pending decision and will be given an opportunity to provide an explanation to the other members of the team. Upon receipt of such an explanation or the passage of a reasonable period of time without such, the team leader may call for a vote on membership withdrawal. A 2/3 majority of the team is required to terminate an individual’s membership in the project team.
5. A member can leave a team at any time but is requested to inform the project leader of his/her intent to do so.
6. A member who has left the team in good standing may apply to rejoin at a later time without prejudice.
7. All active members of a team will be provided with the opportunity to vote on matters pertaining to the team.
8. Authorship rights will be extended to all active and former members whose work has directly or indirectly contributed to the content of the paper. The order of the authors will be decided by the authors of each paper.

Issues not restricted to within a project team, such as voting on the current guidelines or future modifications to them, the endorsement of newly proposed consortium projects, or at-large membership on the coordinating committee, will be subject to a majority vote of the entire GALFA Consortium. Voting will occur via a readily accessible mechanism such as e-voting to a neutral party.

Each project leader has the responsibility for trying to resolve conflicts within a project. The coordinating committee will serve as a resource to try to resolve conflicts within the consortium and/or its constituent project teams. If no solution can be achieved, conflicts will be resolved by majority vote of the project team or consortium as a whole, as appropriate.

The Coordinating Committee is also responsible for ensuring that the individual teams are making all possible efforts towards commensal observing with the other ALFA consortia.