Survey Science Teams and Working Groups

Survey Science Teams

Each of the four surveys has its own Survey Science Team (SST), which acts as the highest level of working group for science associated with that survey. These SSTs are the analogue of the SDSS-I/II Working Groups and correspond to the working groups described in the PoO-III. The Director, in consultation with the survey PIs, Spokesperson, and MC, will appoint a chairperson for each SST. The chairperson will be someone other than the PI or the Survey Scientist. Each SST will include all interested SDSS-III members associated with each of the SDSS-III surveys. The SSTs should communicate using the standard SDSS-III tools, including the survey email lists, the survey wiki/webpages, telecons as needed, and in-person meetings at SDSS-III Collaboration Meetings. The SSTs should pay particular attention to integrating students, postdocs, and other new members into the survey science programs and helping them establish communications with colleagues in the Collaboration. The SST Chair will report annually to the SDSS-III Spokesperson and CoCo on the visibility, accessibility, and efficacy of the SST, including

scientific participation of SDSS-III members (including approved external collaborators) in the survey science,
management of major projects that are central to the survey’s scientific objectives
management of survey data release and technical papers (see Publication Policy),
supervision of approved SST working groups,
promotion of the scientific output from the survey data.

Working Groups

As described in the PoO-III and the Publication Policy, all science projects using non-public SDSS-III data must be announced to the Collaboration via the project-list web page when they are initiated. At a level above these individual projects, which will typically encompass one or several papers led by a few active team members, scientists may wish to collaborate and coordinate in larger groupings and thus create a "working group" (WG) for the sharing of common knowledge, facilities and information. The scope of a WG will typically encompass many complementary projects. To create a WG, a brief statement (< 1 page) should be submitted to the SST Chair and the relevant SST email list(s) by the proposing group of SDSS-III Participants. The statement should invite others to join to ensure a critical mass of people (Participants and external collaborators) is achieved. The SST Chair and Survey PI should then take input from all members of the SST on whether the WG is required. If so, they will mutually approve the WG and appoint a WG "convener" (in consultation with the WG proposers) who is responsible for organizing the working group activity and maintaining the WG activity and communications. The WG convener may be asked to report to the SST Chair (and/or SDSS-III Spokesperson) as the SST Chair is responsible for ensuring all WGs remain active and relevant. All WGs should remain open to membership from anyone within the SDSS-III collaboration. The PI and SST Chair have the power to disband a WG by mutual agreement if the WG does not remain active or appropriate. There is no requirement for any SST to have WGs.