Joining OSSOS

Each topic team is responsible for ensuring that a particular aspect of the survey science is fully exploited. At the start of the survey each member of the project has elected to participate in one or two topic teams, based on their science interests as stated at the start of the survey. By joining a topic team the science team member is committing to helping the Team in this area of science exploitation. Each team has selected one of the team members to be the Team Leader who will act as the principle information conduit back to the survey and is responsible for keeping the topic team focused, organized, and sharing information so that progress is made.

Team members MUST have a precise well-defined role for what they are committed to do in that Topic Team, and agree to openly collaborate with other members of that Topic Team who share similar interests. The OSSOS collaborational agreement (to be electronically signed) must be accepted by each OSSOS collaborator who wishes access to the target list and OSSOS Survey Simulator before the world release.

To join a team there are four steps

1) One must prepare a small proposal. This describes your participation and interests: tell us what you are interested in, and how you want to go about studying that. Tell us what telescopes you can get access to, and what time restrictions you expect to have in the next year or so. 1-2 paragraphs is all that's needed. Then email the proposal to both the Team Leader of the team you plan to join, and the Core Team.

The relevant Team Leader will then send your proposal to every member of that team. They all have to approve, to make sure that no one has science taken from them or unexpected responsibility by adding new members: if there are multiple people working on the same thing, they all need to agree to work together. The Team Leader then updates the OSSOS wiki with your proposed role(s).

2) After the Team Leader has let you know that their team has unanimously approved your membership in the team, you then need to send an email to Core and the team leader stating that you agree to the membership terms/collaboration agreement document. (This link requires privileges to access; if you have not joined yet, ask the Team Leader you are working with to provide you a copy.] You must read this carefully and agree to its conditions. Send that acceptance email to both your team leader and Core.

3) The Core Team will then confirm that your proposal does not conflict with anything proposed inside _other_ OSSOS topic teams. You and the Team Leader will receive a confirmation email after this has been done.

4) Finally, the last step is to get wiki access. Get a CADC account (free, easy, and useful!) and once your CADC account is activated (takes a day or so), send an email to Core requesting wiki access.

Once all that is done, you will be added to the members list on this public wiki and added to the collaboration email lists.

Everyone has to follow these steps. No single member hasn't already gone through this. It just puts everyone on the same footing and makes sure that everyone has seen all the necessary information. If you wish another one of your colleagues to join the group, they must go through the same process.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask! Email the Core Team at ossoscore@gmail.com.