The European Committee for Future Accelerators (ECFA) has created a working group to examine the recognition of individual achievements in large scientific collaborations. Based on feedback from an initial survey of the leaders of 29 CERN-based or CERN-recognised experiments in particle, nuclear, astroparticle and astrophysics, ECFA found that the community is ready to engage in dialogue on this topic and receptive to potential recommendations.
In response, ECFA has launched a community-wide survey to verify how individual researchers perceive the systems put in place to recognise their achievements. The survey will be distributed widely, and can be found on the ECFA website (https://ecfa.web.cern.ch) with a deadline for responses by 26 October.
The results of the survey will be disseminated and discussed at the upcoming plenary ECFA meeting at CERN on 15–16 November. An open session during the morning of 15 November, also to be webcast, will be devoted to the discussion of the outcomes of the survey, and aims to gather input to be submitted to the update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics (CERN Courier April 2018 p7). During the remaining open sessions, comprehensive overviews of all major future collider projects in and beyond Europe, and related accelerator technologies, will be given.
“Visibility and promotion of young scientists is of utmost importance in science and in particular also for the large collaborations in high-energy physics,” says ECFA chairperson Jorgen D’Hondt. “On the eve of the update process of the European Strategy, it is an outstanding opportunity for ECFA to take on its responsibility for informing the community about the opportunities and challenges ahead of us. Everybody is welcome.”
