- ATNF has moved to full anonymisation during the TAC review process. Proposers must not list their team members in the justification. We also encourage proposers to consider using numbered references particularly when self-citations are included. A LaTeX template that uses this approach can be obtained here. Further guidance is given below under “Dual-anonymous Peer Review”.
- AI Usage Policy: The ATNF permits the use of AI-based tools to assist in preparing proposals, provided they are used responsibly. AI services may be used to improve the clarity, readability, and presentation of proposal text. Proposers are fully responsible for the content of their submitted proposals and must ensure that all scientific content and arguments are accurate, original, and appropriately cited. By selecting the acknowledgement checkbox in the OPAL proposal submission tool, proposers confirm that they have read and abide by all ATNF policies governing proposal preparation and submission.
- Note that Large Proposals (>400 hours over the lifetime of the project) and ATNF Long-Term Projects are required to include in their justifications a section describing team roles/contributions (see the OPAL Users Guide, Section 3.4). To do this, and avoid listing team members in the justification, proposers can state the various skills required to conduct the project and refer to the size and composition of the proposing team. For example, “Our team comprises n members, and possesses x people with expertise in planning and conducting these observations, y people with experience in reducing the data, and z members able to interpret the data within the theoretical modelling described earlier.”
Dual-anonymous Peer Review:
In line with many other leading observatories, the ATNF TAC follows a dual-anonymous peer review process. This means that names and affiliations are redacted from the cover sheets when reviewed by the TAC and proposals should not identify any team member within the proposal.
Since this has been in place for several semesters, the TAC now has discretion to penalise proposals that identify authors, either through outright rejection of the proposal (for blatant breaches of anonymity), or by a reduction of the final grade. Below we list some examples of what could be penalized and provide some alternatives that adhere to dual-anonymous peer review practices.
Examples that could warrant a reduction in score:
- e.g. “In [NAME] (2018), we showed x,y,z”,
- “In our previous observations (C1234, PI: Smith)”
- Listing initials when detailing team contributions
Examples that could lead to outright rejection by the TAC:
- Listing PI or author names/collaborators within the proposal document.
- Repeated breaches of the dual anonymous peer review (DAPR) policy.
Instead, the following examples demonstrate ways authors could provide this information in line with ATNF’s anonymity guidelines:
- “Data from C1234 shows that…”
- “It has been shown in [1] that x=y”
- To support these observations, we have compiled a team of XX people. In our team there are 3 members who are experienced observers and 5 who have contributed to our data reduction pipeline and are expert [telescope] users. The remaining YY members will contribute to the scientific analysis.
In general, we caution all proposers to avoid the use of words such as “we, I, our” as this could inadvertently reveal authors or collaborators. Further guidance on the dual anonymous peer review system, and more examples on how to avoid identifying authorship, can be found on other observatory websites such as HST, ESO:
https://outerspace.stsci.edu/display/APRWG/Example+text+for+anonymous+proposing
https://www.eso.org/sci/observing/phase1/dual-anonymous-guidelines.html