Briefly, PIs were approached after the 2014B
proposal deadline and asked if they would
review each other’s proposals. About onethird agreed, went through the review process using the software developed for the
purpose, and submitted feedback about
their experience. Perhaps surprisingly, given
that only ~ 30 percent of the proposals were
included in the trial, the peer review results
correlated quite well with those of the TAC.
The reviewers’ feedback was very positive,
particularly regarding how informative and
educational they found the act of reviewing:
“very useful… more so than a journal club”
was one such comment. This is almost certainly a biased sample; the trial presumably
attracted people who were already enthusiastic about the Fast Turnaround program.
Given that the program will be part of a
suite of proposal modes designed to cater to
Gemini’s large and diverse community, however, this is not necessarily a problem.
Between now and the launch of the pilot in
January, we expect to be busy with several
tasks, including: creating the nuts-and-bolts
web pages that describe the rules and details of the program; readying the supporting
software; defining the statistics, measurements, and feedback that will be gathered;
and performing end-to-end system tests to
find as many gaps and weak points as we can.
References:
Howat, S.K.R., Davies, J.K., “UKIRTSERVICE — a
decade of flexible scheduling,” Astronomical
Society of the Pacific Conference Series, 87: 125,
1996
“An introduction to ukirtserv,” www.jach.hawaii.edu/UKIRT/service/intro.html?printable=1
Mervis, Jeffry, “A radical change in peer review,”
Science, 345: 248, 2014
Merrifield, Michael R., Saari, Donald G., “Telescope time without tears: a distributed approach to peer review,” Astronomy & Geophysics,
50: 16, 2009
Dan Ariely’s TED talk: www.ted.com/
talks/dan_ariely_on_our_buggy_moral_
code?language=en
Mason, R. E., Côté, S., et al., “The Gemini Observatory Fast Turnaround Program,” http://adsabs.
harvard.edu/abs/2014arXiv1408.5916M
Rachel Mason is an Associate Astronomer at
Gemini North. She can be reached at:
[email protected]
We’re excited about the Fast Turnaround
program, and just a little bit nervous. To
reach its full potential, the scheme will need
strong support and participation from the
community, with a steady stream of highquality proposals. We hope you’ll take advantage of this new opportunity and help
us make the Fast Turnaround program a
standard means of applying for time on the
Gemini telescopes.
January 2015
2014 Year in Review
GeminiFocus
57