Joint proposals are single proposals submitted to multiple National Time Allocation Committees (NTACs). During the International TAC process, the separate components that have been individually technically and scientifically assessed by NTACs are merged to form a single proposal. The merged proposal is placed in the queue at an initial position corresponding to the time-weighted mean ranking of the individual national assessments. All joint proposals are discussed by the ITAC. Following execution, time is charged to the participant countries in proportion to their contributions to the merged program.
All joint proposals must be submitted using the Gemini PIT even if the proposal involves participant countries that offer other submission mechanisms for non-joint proposals. No other proposal form or process can be used for joint proposals. Joint proposals should be submitted by the deadline of the participant country to which the Principal Investigator is affiliated.
The PIT submits to all of the participant countries automatically. All of the National Gemini Offices have established servers to receive and process your application directly from the PIT. In the PIT "submit" tab the intended participants are selected by double clicking on the relevant boxes, and you must specify the time and the minimum time, requested from each participant. The total minimum time (sum of the minimum time per participant) must be equal to the minimum acceptable time allocation. This number is used by the ITAC to determine if it is useful to schedule a joint program which is not supported by all of the participants.
As with non-joint proposals, each proposal must have a Principal Investigator who is used as the primary contact by Gemini staff. The PI will receive Phase II instructions from Gemini, automatic notifications from the Observing Database etc. The PIT "submit" page allows others from the list of PI and co-Is to be identified as the National Lead Scientist; each participant may have a different national lead if desired. The national lead scientist is used as the point of contact by National Gemini Office and National TAC support staff during Phase I only. It is important that the roles and contributions of each Participant Lead Scientist are clearly explained in the proposal, as the National TACs of the co-Is will take this into consideration when allocating time.
When the proposal is submitted it is sent to all of the specified participants. The submit tab will report the status of each component. If one or more of the components fail to be submitted, for example due to unavailability of the network or backend server at the national office, they can be re-sent by the applicants at a later time. (The successfully-submitted components are not re-sent). If you experience a problem with submission, please contact your National Gemini Office support staff in the first instance.