Maintaining an Active Proposal

All proposals for beamtime will have the option to remain active for up to two years (i.e., four six-month cycles). If your proposal is eligible for renewal, please submit a Proposal Renewal Form (http://alsusweb.lbl.gov/4DCGI/WEB_GetForm/RolloverPassword.shtml/Initialize). You can use this form to report progress to date, any publications to date, and to specify how many beamtime shifts you are requesting for the next cycle.

If your proposal was awarded beamtime in the current cycle, your proposal's score will be bumped numerically higher by 0.1. So if your score was close to the cutoff, you may not be awarded beamtime in the next cycle. If your proposal's score was well below the cutoff, then you will most likely be awarded beamtime in the next cycle.

If your current proposal was not awarded beamtime in the current cycle, you can still renew the proposal. In this case your score will not be bumped higher, whereas other proposals who were awarded beamtime will be bumped higher. This will increase your chance to fall below the cutoff and be awarded beamtime, however if sufficient new proposals are submitted and receive higher scores than yours, your proposal may not be awarded beamtime. For more information on score bumping, see Score Normalization in Beamtime Allocations.

If you would prefer to write and submit a new proposal because your research plans have changed or you want to try and improve your score, you may do that at any time by simply submitting a new ALS beamtime proposal instead of renewing your existing proposal.

More than one proposal from a given user in a cycle is fine, however each proposal should have a distinct research area and plan.