For MLF Users (3)

Procedures for Conducting Experiment

Procedures before conducting experiments at MLF

1. Documentation to be submitted

Users must complete and submit the following documents to the J-PARC Users Office before or at the time of arrival.

  • Letter of Agreement for Experiment: The principal investigator is required to submit a completed Letter of Agreement. In this form, the principal investigator asserts that he/she is familiar with regulations and related rules of J-PARC/MLF and ensures all collaborators understand them thoroughly.
  • Consent: Each collaborator must have a copy of this form signed by their supervisor or manager at their home institution verifying that he/she has permission to engage in research activity at MLF.
  • User agreement for MLF use: The principal investigator is required to submit this form with the signature of their supervisor or manager at their home instituteino in addition to the above two forms if the users are conducting a proprietary experiment or if additional expenses are necessary to conduct the experiment.

Users planning to bring chemicals and equipment necessary for conducting experiments at MLF are required to submit documents on these items for a safety review. Details on this procedure are announced on the web site.

2. Insurance

All users must be insured at their own or their home institution's expense against injuries from unforeseen accidents that may occur during the experiment. However, this requirement is waived for users that are employees of any of the following legal organizations or entities within Japan:

  • Public or private colleges, universities, and other institutions of higher education
  • Public or not-for-profit research organizations
  • Private companies

Procedures requested after completion of experiments at MLF

3. Notification of completion of experiment

Users are asked to submit a beamtime completion form as soon as the experiment at MLF is completed. The beamtime used for the experiment and the amount of gas consumed during the experiment should be reported in the beamtime completion form. The users must receive a certification of completion from the person responsible for the experimental instrument, or from an equivalent substitute.
The date certified by the person responsible for the instrument will be the official completion date of the experiment.

4. Experiment reports

Nonproprietary users are obliged to submit an experimental report for each experiment conducted at MLF within 60 days of the day after the completion date.

The experiment report must include a description of the methods used to perform the MLF experiment as well as the results that were obtained. The final conclusions and data analysis should also be included if possible. If the users could not conduct the experiment as proposed, the reason(s) should be reported in the experiment report. Note that submitted reports will be published in the MLF annual report.

If the experimental report is not submitted by the deadline, subsequent proposals from the user may be rejected.

5. Publishing your research

Any publications on experiments at MLF should contain an acknowledgement of the support received from MLF, for example "Experiments were carried out using a neutron/muon instrument at the MLF Pulsed Neutron and Muon Source at J-PARC." You are also expected to include the person(s) responsible for the MLF instrument(s) that was used, as well as any MLF/J-PARC members that provided significant input to the experiment, as co-author(s) of your publication. This should be discussed with the person(s) responsible for the MLF instrument(s) during the experiment.

Once the results have been published, users should notify MLF via the registration form available on the website or in an e-mail including the proposal number, instrument number, name of the principal investigator and the publication list.

E-mail: j-uo@ml.j-parc.jp
Maximum size of attachments: 4MB

6. Data access policy

Experimental data recorded in non-proprietary experiments will be stored in the data storage system of MLF. After a storage period of three years during which the experimental group is expected to publishthe data for public viewing, the user may receive the data from the J-PARC Center if they apply for use of the data in advance and the purpose is approved in a review by J-PARC Center.