After your beamtime at TOMCAT

Upon return to your home institution, please check carefully that you have a complete and intact copy of all your experimental data acquired at TOMCAT. As detailed in the data storage policy, your experimental data will be automatically deleted from the PSI servers after a retention period of 60 days (a reminder email will be sent to the main proposer two weeks prior deletion). In case you experience problems with the transfer or you do find that some data is missing or incomplete, notify your local contact immediately to retrieve the missing parts before deletion.

You are entirely responsible for the backup and security of your data. PSI and TOMCAT do not guarantee and cannot be made responsible for the safety of your experimental data against data loss. NO full BACKUP of your experimental data is done at PSI. However, PSI now offers long-term storage and retrieval capabilities, and within this context, we routinely archive a single (non-redundant) copy of all relevant raw data (only projections, no reconstructions) on the tape-based PetaByte archive system hosted at the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS) in Lugano, subject to the terms and conditions of the PSI Data Policy.

Please note that shipping of hard drives or experimental equipment from SLS to your home institution will incur costs that are charged to you as the recipient. If you have any concerns, discuss any shipping issues with your local contact prior to your departure.

Also make sure to minimize the work load on your local contact and SLS staff by preparing the necessary shipping documents and packaging material ahead of time. Avoid shipment if possible.

To support users with their analysis needs, particularly when the data volume is important and a larger scale computing infrastructure is required, PSI has launched a local data analysis center that allows remote access for users to PSI infrastructure. Users can make use of a high performance computing cluster facility and a variety of installed software and tools. For example, the TOMCAT data reconstruction pipeline is installed on this cluster. Users can run their own reconstructions on PSI infrastructure from their home terminal. Users can also use their own specific custom tools for instance for data analysis and quantification directly on this facility.

More information about the data analysis center can be found here: Data analysis center

Please take a few minutes to fill out and submit a brief end of run feedback form on your experiment and your stay at PSI. Your input is very valuable to us to improve and optimize our service at TOMCAT.

The feedback form can be found in the DUO system under
DUO > Proposals > Experiment feedbacks

or accessed directly under this link to the feedback forms

Each experiment requires a short experimental report. This helps PSI track the progress and quality of experiments carried out here. In addition, the experimental reports are a very important input when submitting a new proposal. A missing report from a previous beamtime could potentially have a negative impact on the evaluation of the next one.

Guidelines to prepare the report:

  • The experimental report should be submitted a few months after finishing an experiment
  • The report should be 1-2 pages in length and contain some figures, if appropriate
  • The report should contain a brief overview of the project, an evaluation of the quality of the measurements and data obtained from TOMCAT, a brief status report on the progress of analysis and evaluation, and some preliminary results.
  • If a new proposal refers to a previous one, it is mandatory that the experimental report of the preceding experiment has already been submitted.
  • The reports are treated confidentially and are only visible to beamline staff and the proposal review committee.

For more information, consult the SLS Guidelines on experimental reports.

The report has to be submitted via the DUO system under
DUO > Proposals > Experimental reports

You can also directly access the list of experimental reports in DUO

Guidelines

SLS has the following guidelines for publications containing data or results obtained at the SLS:

Any publication resulting from a SLS beamtime project should include the beamline/instrument responsible as co-author.

At least, the authors must mention Paul Scherrer Institut, SLS, the instrument and the beamline/station support in the acknowledgement. The following statement should be used for all experiments carried out at the TOMCAT beamline [where the part in parentheses is optional]:

"We acknowledge the Paul Scherrer Institut, Villigen, Switzerland for provision of synchrotron radiation beamtime at the TOMCAT beamline X02DA of the SLS [and would like to thank xyz for assistance]."

For more information, refer to the SLS Publication Guidelines page.

Register publications in DORA-PSI

All publications that include results based on data obtained at SLS should be registered in the DORA-PSI system. The number of papers and paper citations is taken as a measure of the impact of the SLS and of TOMCAT, which will influence the future financial support the facility and the beamline receive.

Please register your publication directly in DORA-PSI using this link. Please follow the link "Add Publication" from the DORA main menu.

DORA-PSI also serves as green open access repository for publications based on data taken at the PSI facilities to meet the recent guidelines for most funding agencies. For that purpose please also attach the "accepted versions" of your publications to the DORA-PSI database.

In addition to registering the publications in the system, please also notify your local contact or TOMCAT management of any published work.