Telecon Minutes

10/03/2022 - Telecon

24/02/2022 - Telecon

10/02/2022 - Telecon

The ECDC agreed to encourage early-career researchers to join the ECB/ECC listening and answering questions session on Feb 22. The ECDC discussed whether it wants it to be generally true that the ECDC chair is a de facto member of the early-career committee moving forward, as it might be added to the new management document. The edited version of the FTE letter was sent to the ECB on Feb 9. The ECDC agreed to encourage ECC members to join the SOC annual meeting. Gender balance is an issue in the SOC, the ECDC will ask for the exact current list. The ECDC edited the questions in the climate survey and added the note that comments in the survey do not constitute a formal complaint. The ECDC discussed possible improvements to the CoC.

27/01/2022 - Telecon

The ECDC discussed several EC policy change recommendations which were presented to the board including the new Code of Conduct rule on video recording, which has now been endorsed by the ECB. The ECDC also discussed plans for a consortium wide climate survey. ECDC members were assigned roles to update the Code of Conduct. The ECDC discussed training of EC managers.

16/12/2021 - Telecon

Minutes of last telecon approved after some amendments. ECDC Chair’s’s talk at Euclid UK went well; there were some comments on the number of complaints received (higher than last year). The idea of a “Climate Survey” was raised to be discussed further in the New Year. The Committee approved an amendment to the Code of Conduct covering protocols relating to the recording of meetings. The Committee continued to discuss steps towards FTE assignments for those whose activity in Euclid has been suspended. There was a brief discussion of plans for the 2022 Annual Consortium Meeting in Oslo.

09/12/2021 - Telecon

The minutes of the previous telecon were approved. The ECDC talk at the Euclid France meeting was well received.. The discussion concerning the recording of talks, telecons and meetings was resumed. A new section of the EC Code of Conduct was draftedThe ECDC has finalized its recommendations regarding EC membership rules for leaving members.The ECDC has finalized its recommendations regarding the FTE tracking. The suggestion of a yearly reminder concerning the signature of EC papers has been agreed upon by the ECEB chair. The ECDC Chair will be part of the SOC for the next EC annual Consortium meeting.

18/11/2021 - Telecon

Former telecon minutes were approved. Talk by Amandine Le Brun on behalf of the ECDC at the Euclid France meeting happening on the day (18/11/2021). Discussions regarding the recording of telecons and meetings within the EC continued, explicit consent seems to be the de facto rule legally, similar to image rights. The formal complaint regarding the recording of meetings has been discussed. The ECDC is working on a draft letter to the ECLs and the ECB, as well as clarifications to be added to the code of Conduct. The ECDC discussed the remaining rights of people leaving for a non-EC institution. Recommendations to ECLs and the ECB will be drafted. The ECDC discussed the FTE tracking in the specific case of long-term illness, disabilities and carers. The ECDC redmine page is now live and directly accessible from the Redmine Welcome page.

04/11/2021 - Telecon

Dates of the next EC annual meeting are announced. National Euclid meetings will take place in Nov-Dec in the UK and in France; ECDC presentations will be given, and ECDC welcomes these opportunities. The ECDC received a formal complaint, actions to follow the case are planned. It is noted that the email sent to EC members concerning the “good practice” of accurately reading a new publication before signing led to a positive result. The ECDC continued its discussion regarding the membership rules when an EC member moves to a non-EC institute.

19/10/2021 - Telecon

07/10/2021 - Telecon

The ECDC continued its discussion about allowing EC members to retain their publication rights and FTEs after leaving the consortium or `pausing their membership’. The ECDC considered whether these membership benefits should be retained permanently after leaving the consortium or for a limited time window. We also discussed the issue of retaining rights when moving to an institute in a non-EC country, particularly with regards to FTE tracking.

23/09/2021 - Telecon

The ECDC discussed the issue of continued EC membership when, upon completion of a contract at an EC institution, a scientist moves to a non-EC institution. By the current rules, they should no longer be members and will lose all publication rights. There was a broad consensus that it's unfair to cut people off abruptly. The ECDC is thus discussing the matter and working on suggestions/actions to improve the situation, in particular for early career researchers.

09/09/2021 - Telecon

Introduction and presentation of the new members of ECDC. Mathilde was contacted by an EC member about the difficulty to find the list of members of the ECDC, their contact details, as well as where to find the code of conduct. The website of ECDC has not been endorsed yet and in the meantime rely on a Redmine dedicated page for ECDC. One ECDC member has been editing it, still as a draft but should be finalized soon. During the last teleconf of ECEB, an issue was raised that only after 5 min of the posting of a new paper to the publication portal, many people signed up and the question arose regarding the scientific integrity of these actions, i.e. did people have time to really read the paper ? The ECDC contacted the ECEB to advise an email being sent to the whole of the EC reminding people about professional integrity. ECDC was contacted regarding the FTE calculations where ECDC was asked that more flexibility should be allowed. A draft version of the ECDC recommendations to the ECB was circulated and finalized by the newt telecon.

12/08/2021 - Telecon

The ECDC finalized the selection of the new ECDC members. Further points discussed were : (1) Diversity within the ECDC -> action of ECDC to get a representative committee - e.g. contacts with the funding agencies; (2) Need to have clear rules for nominations to the ECDC -> clear document stating these, including a clear definition of the conflict of interest and how to deal with it; (3) Five new members were selected out of the applications received: Amandine Le Brun (France), Peter Coles (Ireland), Shahab Joudaki (Canada), Marc Huertas-Company (Spain), Florence Durret (France) - in addition: Mark Brodwin (USA) and Chiara Sirignano (Italy) were renewed as ECDC members for the next 3 years. Notice that nowhere the rule of only 1 term for ECDC components is written explicitly, not in the present version of the CoC, nor in any other document we are aware of (see point 2).

22/07/2021 - Telecon

17/06/2021 - Telecon

Co-authors signing papers within 5 minutes of posting on the ECEB portal has been identified as an issue. This could be a breach of research conduct. The ECDC will draft and send a reminder to the Consortium that all members must read the conclusion and abstract and understand the main findings at an absolute minimum. There is a desire to have an early career Euclid fellowship. Supernational funding is the major bottleneck. However, there may be a precedent in LSST. The ECDC is following-up. We also discussed adding an early career representative to the board. While this may be difficult based on what is discussed at board meetings, it would be useful for the chair and deputy chair to set up dedicated meetings every 2-3 months open to all early career EC members. Finally, we discussed adding a 2^nd correspondence author to the portal in the instance where the lead author is a junior researcher. This is not currently possible in the portal so the email in the portal will remind collaborators to cc supervisors in correspondence with junior researchers as a temporary solution. We discussed that at collaboration meetings we should have sessions for junior researcher flash talks and longer EDI talks. There was a discussion about how to count FTEs in the case of illness or family obligations. General agreement that FTE should be counted as a fraction of total hours worked spent on Euclid, where the total hours worked is set by the home institution in the case of illness or family obligations. We have also identified that it is not clear who validates FTEs in the portal and there is a need for a more official mechanism in FTE disputes.

03/06/2021 - Telecon

The EC annual meeting took place on May 25-28, everything worked pretty well, plenary sessions were in the Zoom Webinar format, parallel sessions were standard meetings. Zoom webinar format sets some limitations to attendees (i.e. participants’ list not public, audio de-activated), this is due to Zoom security settings and can’t be avoided. Tana Joseph’s presentation was really appreciated, it is proposed to have a chance to attend the “longer version” of Tana’s talk, ECDC talk was appreciated as well. During the Early Career Workshop it was proposed to have an EC Fellowship; it has to be investigated how to set-up a common fund for this purpose; it looks complicated but it is agreed also within the ECDC that it is worth trying.

The email to launch the call for new ECDC members is ready and the deadline for applications is set to July 9 2021.

There was a discussion about how to count FTEs in case of long breaks due to illness or in case of a recognized handicap. It was agreed that cases have to be treated in a uniform way within the EC in order to avoid effects related to the specific country or to the validator. It was also noted that these cases are regulated by laws on the country/institution base that have to be checked.

20/05/2021 - Telecon

The program of the EC annual meeting (May 25-28) is close to final. Tana Joseph will give a presentation on Wednesday 26th of May on "Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Astronomy". A new call for ECDC members is due in 2021 to replace 6 positions. The ECDC will announce a first call during the collaboration meeting and ask nominations to be submitted by the end of June. The selection of the new members will be done in July with a starting date of the new members in September. A list of 41 names of Euclid Builders has been sent to ECB which will be announced by Francisco Castander during the EC meeting. The ECDC Chair shared the slides of their talk for the EC annual meeting and asked for feedback. On the ECDC website, the summary of the teleconfs is missing and will be added as well as the advertising of the Early Career Committee.

06/05/2021 - Telecon

Solicited by the SOC of the EC annual meeting, the ECDC suggested names for plenary talks to encourage diversity. The ECDC discussed the EC builders’ list. There is currently a lack of gender balance and a bias toward instrumentation (in adequation with the FTE request). The situation will be followed during the next telecons. The ECDC discussed how to add the ECC to the website as well as where to add the summaries of ECDC actions. The ECDC clarified some misunderstandings regarding its involvement in KP coordinators’ nomination. The ECDC is only concerned by the diversity and thus only ensures that everybody is given an equal opportunity. In case of a severe lack of diversity balance, the ECDC tries to understand the reasons. The ECDC might actually conduct a survey to appreciate the latter.

22/04/2021 - Telecon

08/04/2021 - Telecon

During the upcoming Euclid annual meeting, EDI talks will be held at the available Plenary Sessions (3 in total). This includes one talk by Dr. Tana Joseph, one talk by Simona (as the coordinator of the IAU WP Management of Diversity and Inclusion in Large International Collaborations) and a third one by Mathilde on behalf of the ECDC. The ECDC talk will report on the previous year activities, and present the new ECDC website. There was still no news re. the usage of the images for the banners, which was however a minor point as the pages are at an excellent stage and may always be improved. Some further suggestions for the pages were discussed, including rephrasing to include explicitly the mention of verbal bullying (especially towards junior collaboration members). The ECDC received a new formal complaint, which was quickly presented at the end of the telecon. The telecon ended with a discussion regarding the complaint that was previously received, a member of the ECDC left the meeting due to a conflict of interest.

25/03/2021 - Telecon

The ECB is assembling a new committee to approve the list of new EC builders. Mathilde will serve in the committee on behalf of ECDC. Regarding the upcoming annual meeting, the ECDC discussed: (1) EDI talks to be added to the programme and spread throughout the 4 days of the meeting, (2) EDI talks to be scheduled during the plenary. We are still waiting on approval to use image banners, but the website is in good-enough state to be sent for comments and then endorsement to ECL and then ECB.

11/03/2021 - Telecon

The ECDC discussed how to improve the webpage and gave tasks to several members to do so. The ECDC identified the need to improve the CoC. The ECDC identified actions to make its activities more transparent and the ECDC more representative of the Euclid Collaboration. The ECDC started discussing which diversity talks to have at the Euclid Consortium meeting. The ECDC received a formal complaint and discussed it at the end of the telecon. One of the ECDC members had a conflict of interest and thus did not attend the discussion.

25/02/2021 - Telecon

The ECDC agreed with the list of candidates for the position of co-lead of the new IST:Likelihood Work Package of Galaxy Clustering SWG, and endorsed the favoured candidate. The ECDC discussed progress regarding the ECDC website and in particular the possibility of merging it with the EC official website---this was agreed to be finalised by the next ECDC meeting. The ECDC further discussed transparency of the ECDC actions, in particular reporting to the annual EC meeting.

11/02/2021 - Telecon

The ECDC endorsed the ECICC survey, and acknowledged the endorsement of the ECICC report by the ECB. The ECDC discussed the possible clarification of the tracking document, explaining how to account for participation in the EC (FTEs), and recommendations were sent to the ECB. Finally the ECDC discussed the finalization of the ECDC website.