# MINOS Authorship and Publications Committee

(Version 4.0, approved in June 2007)

The administration of the approval of refereed papers, physics results,
conference submissions and publications and of the MINOS author list
will be the responsibility of the MINOS Authorship and Publications
(MAP) committee. The committee will consist of the spokespeople, the IB
chairperson and the elected members of the executive committee. The
committee will elect a MAP chairperson and deputy and a Technical Paper
Coordinator.

# MINOS Analysis Approval Procedure

1)  The decision as to whether to have a blind analysis and any blinding
    procedure which will be used in the analysis must be presented to,
    and approved by, the collaboration in an early stage of the
    analysis.

2)  The approval of the collaboration must be given before any
    un-blinding of an analysis.

3)  The MAP committee will define the means of the approval.

# MINOS Data Approval Procedure

> The data approval procedure is covered, by a separate document, which
> was approved in December 2006. *(Student theses are not covered by
> this procedure.)*

# MINOS Paper Approval Procedure

1)  There will be two types of paper approval;

    a.  Physics papers

    b.  Technical papers

2)  Physics Papers

    a.  Draft papers will normally be born and iterated within the
        appropriate working group and are thus expected to be quite
        mature before being submitted for consideration for publication.

    b.  Draft papers from the working groups or any other sources will
        be submitted for consideration to the MAP committee.

    c.  The MAP committee will appoint an ad hoc group of referees, at
        least 2 from the full collaboration and one from MAP, who are
        knowledgeable on the subject of the paper but not directly
        associated with the work reported. The MAP chair will choose the
        chair of the ad-hoc committee. The charge of the ad-hoc
        committee will be to discuss the paper with the authors with the
        constructive objective of improving the physics and/or the
        presentation of the paper to bring it to a publication-ready
        standard.

    d.  After the author(s) have received and acted on the ad-hoc
        committee\'s comments, the revised paper, together with the
        ad-hoc committee\'s report, will be presented in an open session
        at a collaboration meeting and placed on the internal web.

    e.  During the following three weeks, collaboration members may make
        comments to the ad-hoc committee, who will filter these comments
        to those which in their opinion improve the paper, and those
        which do not. The author(s) will have the responsibility of
        incorporating any changes which are the outcome of this process.
        The ad-hoc committee will be responsible for responding to any
        substantive comments which are considered not to warrant
        inclusion.

    f.  At the end of the three week period the authors will produce
        another version of the paper which will be posted for
        collaboration comments. One week will be allocated to this,
        after which the ad-hoc committee and author(s) will produce what
        is expected to be a final version.

    g.  Once the above is done, the ad-hoc committee can decide either
        to recommend to MAP that they approve the paper for publication,
        or, if there are substantial changes to ask the author(s) to
        post the paper for another week of collaboration scrutiny and
        the ensuing comments.

    h.  If at this point there is an impasse between the ad-hoc
        committee and the authors or if the ad-hoc committee feels that
        there is no consensus in the Collaboration either on major
        physics issues or on suitability for publication, the ad-hoc
        committee will refer the issue to MAP.

    i.  The MAP committee will approve the paper for publication, if it
        considers that a consensus of the collaboration has been reached
        and that the paper is suitable for publication. This will be
        done by a full review of the ad-hoc committee\'s report and of
        the comments received.

    j.  If the MAP committee considers that valid criticism has been
        made it will appoint a further ad-hoc committee to study the
        objections with the paper's authors. A revised paper will be
        presented to the collaboration as in d).

    k.  If a consensus still cannot be reached a vote of the whole
        collaboration will be held. Of those voting, a 90% majority in
        favor of publication will be required for publication.

    l.  If the journal refereeing process requires any significant
        change to the physics content of the paper the changes must pass
        through the approval process as above except that the
        presentation to the collaboration may be made at a phone meeting
        if the next collaboration meeting is more than one month away.

3)  Technical papers

    a.  Technical papers are expected to come from relatively small
        groups who have done R&D on a hardware or software component of
        the MINOS experiment or have used the MINOS MC for studies of
        physics capabilities beyond the remit of the MINOS experiment.

    b.  Draft papers will be produced by the group and submitted to the
        Technical Paper Coordinator who will appoint a small group of
        referees. The referees will read the paper in depth and offer
        comments to the authors and MAP on both content and editorial
        issues.

    c.  After the interaction with the readers the revised paper will be
        posted on the internal web site and comments to the authors and
        MAP invited from the full collaboration. Ten days will be
        allowed for comments.

    d.  The final responsibility for the paper belongs to the authors.
        However the MAP committee will review both the reader's and the
        collaboration's comments and if it considers that they have
        substance, which has not been addressed it will notify the full
        collaboration.

4)  The MAP committee will maintain a set of guidelines for the authors
    of papers, covering time-scales, procedures and contact persons.

# MINOS Authorship Rules

Current Authors:

-   PhD physicist or graduate student

-   Currently working on MINOS

-   Has input at least one calendar year of significant effort.

-   Is commitment to do significant work, which is of general utility to
    the collaboration other than analysis (service work). The
    spokespersons, with the advice of various working group leaders,
    will both provide a list of tasks that qualify to be designated
    service work and certify (upon recommendation of the IB
    representative of the relevant MINOS group) when that obligation has
    been fulfilled.

Legacy author:

-   Has left the collaboration

-   Has been a current author in the past

-   Stays one year as legacy author, for each two years worked on MINOS
    (fractions rounded up).

-   Living legacy authors will be asked to consider signing up to be on
    the paper.

1)  Physics papers

    a.  Physics papers will be signed by the full collaboration (current
        and legacy authors).

    b.  Other people, who have made significant contributions to MINOS,
        may automatically be authors of the first MINOS paper and the
        first paper dealing with neutrino oscillations using the NuMI
        beam.

    c.  Each group will submit to the IB a set of names for general
        authorship of those who qualify under the above criteria plus
        any other names that the group wishes to put forward for special
        consideration, yearly on the 1^st^ January.

    d.  The MAP committee will vet the names list. If, after discussion
        between the committee and the group, there is still disagreement
        on whether a name qualifies, a vote, decided by a simple
        majority of those present, will be held in the IB.

    e.  A special case for inclusion on a specific paper may be made to
        the MAP committee, either by a group or an individual, when the
        person in question has made an important contribution to that
        paper but does not qualify for authorship under the general
        rules. If the MAP committee rejects the case, the group or
        individual may appeal to the IB, which will vote as in section
        f).

    f.  Authors will be listed in alphabetical order with references to
        an institution list, also in alphabetical order.

    g.  Any author may remove their name from a paper by notifying the
        chairperson of the MAP committee.

2)  Technical papers

    a.  Technical papers will have a restricted set of authors
        consisting of those who have made a significant intellectual
        contribution to the subject of the paper.

    b.  The Technical Paper Coordinator will act as a moderator for the
        author list.

    c.  A draft paper will contain a proposed author list. Anybody not
        on the list who thinks they have a case for inclusion may
        contact the authors and the Technical Paper Coordinator.

    d.  Disputes over authorship will be resolved by the MAP committee,
        appeals may be made to the IB as in section 1)f).

# Conference Presentation Approval Procedure

1)  Only approved physics results may be presented at conferences and in
    seminars.

2)  Other MINOS results are on a graded scale of sensitivity. In general
    detector and event pictures may be shown without approval. Care
    should be taken with items closer to physics, such as resolutions.
    Data shown at semi-public occasions such as PAC or Lehman reviews
    may be shown. In case of doubt the chairperson of MAP should be
    consulted.

3)  It is the responsibility of the physics working groups and
    particularly the working group conveners to maintain a reasonable
    supply of new results, including Monte Carlo and detector diagnostic
    results, available for conference speakers. Conveners should refer
    to the list of approved speakers and conference dates on the MINOS
    web to provide a timely set of results.

4)  Conference presentations and any subsequent proceedings will be
    signed as "John Bull, for the MINOS collaboration".

5)  Speakers must post their slides on the MINOS web site at least one
    week before the first day of the conference and send an email to
    minos_authors informing the collaboration of their presence.

6)  All results not yet published in journals shall be noted as
    preliminary.

7)  Written conference proceedings must be submitted to the MAP
    Committee for approval. Provided only approved results are included
    approval will normally be automatic.

8)  Adherence to these regulations is a condition for future conference
    presentations.