How the ATLAS Collaboration Works

This twiki helps you to navigate through the organisation, policies/guidelines, and practices followed by the ATLAS Collaboration.

ATLAS structure in a nut shell

The ATLAS organisation is guided by the principles of democracy, separation of policy making and executive powers, minimal formal organisation, and limited terms of office.

The organisation structure is described in this twiki, including a brief description of all the top-level roles and a summary via an organigramme. It consists of Activity Areas (Data Preparation, Operations, Physics, Software & Computing, Trigger), Projects (Forward, HGTD, ID (Pixel, SCT, TRT), ITk (Pixel, Strip), LAr, Muon, TDAQ, Tile), and other activities (Technical Coordination, Upgrade, Education&Outreach, and other dedicated committees/boards). The main bodies include:

• The Collaboration Board (CB) is the policy and decision-making body of the ATLAS Collaboration and consists of, in general, of one representative per Institution and members of the Executive Board who act as ex-officio. CB policies that govern the organisation of the ATLAS experiment.
• The Executive Board (EB) directs the execution of the ATLAS project, in line with policies set by the Collaboration Board. The Executive Board brings together the coordinators responsible for the ATLAS operation and physics exploitation, with a view to the overall performance of the experiment.
• The Management Team currently consisting of the Spokesperson, two Deputy Spokespersons, Technical Coordinator, Resources Coordinator and Upgrade Coordinator.

The ATLAS Memoranda of Understanding are the formal agreements between the Funding Agencies / Institutions and CERN for the construction, upgrade, and exploitation of the ATLAS detector. The technical design plans of the ATLAS experiment through its different phases are laid out in the TDRs.

The front line for any questions about ATLAS is the ATLAS Secretariat!

Publication, authorship, accessing data

• ATLAS publication policy and Publications Committee twiki
  • Publications of non-ATLAS papers are discussed in Section 5 of the publication policy
• ATLAS authorship policy and Authorship Committee twiki
  • Qualifying as an ATLAS author, including instructions to start the qualification process and requests for exceptional authorship on publications
• Accessing data:
  • Data Access Policy.
  • CERN Open Data Policy for the LHC Experiments and Implementation Plan
• Collaborating with ATLAS:
  • Access of non-ATLAS physicists to ATLAS data and unofficial results

Coordination of (sub)groups, projects, activities, committees/boards, management

• Overall description of elections procedure, including how to designate the ATLAS Spokesperson and positions related to the Collaboration, Executive, Institute, and International Computing Boards.
• Selection and mandate of ATLAS Speakers Committee and Speakers Committee Advisory Board
• Process for the selection of:
  • Physics Working Group Conveners.
  • Physics Analysis Group Conveners and Combined Performance Group Conveners.
  • Subgroup Conveners
• List of all current ATLAS (sub)group conveners, coordinators, Project Leaders, including the history
• Upgrade organisation including the role of the Upgrade Steering Group (USC responsible for the overall steering, oversight and monitoring of the upgrade programme
• Early Career Scientists Board (ECSB) and a document describing its composition, appointment, and mandate.

Membership and related information

• GLANCE member profile where ATLAS members can
  • agree (or not) to show their photo in GLANCE and make their convenership history public outside of ATLAS
  • see their OTP record
  • see the details of their SCAB ranking
  • see the status of their authorship qualification progress
  • see their ATLAS appointment history
  • where they can change the first and last names that appear in the CERN phone book and in GLANCE
• ATLAS fully upholds CERN's principles of inclusiveness and diversity as enshrined in the CERN Code of Conduct.
  • ATLAS' statement on Diversity and Inclusion and D&I contacts

Physics Analyses and Combined Performance

• How Physics Analysis and Combined Performance groups are organised including the roles of (sub)group conveners
• Policies on the production and approval of physics results
• Guidelines and procedures for the approval of ATLAS physics results, including the roles of the bodies/individuals, supporting documents in the approval and steps to final approval
• Approval process:
  • performance and operations plots including generator-level plots
  • Conference notes
  • Papers
  • Pub Notes
  • Conference Proceedings for physics analysis and combined performance talks

Conferences/workshops, public talks, student theses

• Speakers Committee twiki and Speakers Committee Advisory Board (SCAB) twiki. Speaker Committee FAQ.
• How speakers are selected for conferences and how the SCAB rank is calculated.
• What can be shown...
  • by students in conferences and in public talks: twiki and Collaboration Board (CB) policy or in job interviews
  • in student theses and policies for theses (including how to label unapproved plots in student theses)
  • by scientists with PhDs giving job interviews.
  • in reviews by Funding Agencies and in grant applications
• How to label unapproved student plots shown at national meetings, at physics schools, or seminars for job applications

Operations Tasks Planning (OTP)

• Panel for Operations Task Sharing (POTS) including its mandate
• Yearly operations tasks share per Institution and Funding Agency.
• Policy on the definition of operations tasks, assigning of MoU costs.
• OTP allocation after completion of the Author Qualification Project
• How upgrade tasks are taken into account in OTP calculations.
• Variety of premade reports showing OTP predictions and allocations in system and activity areas over the years.
• Yearly reports on OTP are given during the Collaboration and CB Matters session of the February ATLAS Weeks