In the Special Call for the GBT, they are handling the review process offline. The general process is here

  • Proposals are submitted as a DDT.
  • GBO distributes the proposals to internal reviewers who are not conflicted. There are multiple reviewers per proposal. (Toney M did not specify the nominal number of reviewers per proposal in the email.)
  • For the science reviews will provide the following information
    for each proposal.
    Summary:
    Strengths:
    Weaknesses:
    Consider for scheduling (Yes/No): Yes
    Technical Issues:
    Recommended Observing Time:
  • The reviewers will provide a ranked order list of the five proposals. One will be the highest ranked and 5 the lowest. Reviewers will email their comments and ranks to the TTA Group Member.
  • The TTA Group Member will consolidate the reviews into a single review for each proposal. Then an average value was derived from these individual ranks per proposal to produce a final rank-ordered list.

  • The Director then selected the proposals which would be observed (C-) or not (N).  Essentially a binary decision.

In meeting with Jim Jackson, we summarized our plans for TTAT.  In scope now is the ability to create a separate call (or Solicitation) for SIP.  There are two proposal processes: proposal panel review and observatory site review. The latter is used for DDT.  In principle we could accommodate the SIP using the observatory site review, but it might be useful to develop another proposal process.

Jim said that he is unsure whether or not these special calls will be common.  The current call was created because of problems with the feed-arm and sub-reflected that prevented high frequency observing. So all the low frequency proposals were executed.  But there has been a dearth of low frequency proposals.  Whether or not this will continue is hard to predict.  Jim did think that the review process could be standardized and run like SIP.


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