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The BTAPs met twice during the year, around six weeks after the deadlines for submission of proposals (10 September 2020 and 1 March 2021). They reviewed 1920 applications for beam time in 2021 and selected 816 (42.5%) in total. Requests for beam time in 2021, which is scheduled in shifts of eight hours, totalled 27 371 shifts and, of these, 11 822 shifts (43.2%) were allocated. The distribution of shifts requested and allocated by scientific area for 2021 is shown in Table 6, while the number of shifts requested, allocated and delivered per year since 2014 is shown in Figure 156. The data for delivered shifts in 2021 include experiments up to 31 December 2021, and so are not yet complete since the 2021/II operation period will finish on 1 March 2022.

The annual number of public experimental sessions and user visits since 2014 is shown in Figure 155. In 2021, 46% of public user visits were remote, meaning that the user did not travel to the ESRF but participated in the experiment remotely, and 48% of all public experiment sessions were carried out fully remotely (i.e., with no onsite users).

One of the key performance indicators of the ESRF is the number and quality of publications accepted in peer-reviewed journals, resulting from data taken either wholly or partially at the ESRF or including ESRF staff as authors. Yearly publication output from the ESRF is typically at a level of over 1800, as shown in Figure 157, with nearly 400 every year (347 in 2021) published in high impact factor journals (IF > 7). This figure decreased slightly in 2020 and, more notably, in 2021 when, at the time of going to press, 1140 publications had so far been registered. This figure will continue to evolve well into 2022, but the lower figures for 2020 and 2021 are a direct result of the period in 2019-2020 when the facility was not operating due to the ESRF-EBS upgrade. Overall, a total of 37 320 publications have been accepted in peer-reviewed journals based on research carried out at the ESRF. These are excellent figures, showing that ESRF research output remains one of the highest worldwide.

SCIENTIFIC FIELD TOTAL SHIFTS REQUESTED

TOTAL SHIFTS ALLOCATED

Chemistry 4 438 1 518

Earth Sciences 2 099 859

Environment 675 180

Hard Condensed Matter Science 6 353 2 478

Cultural Heritage 213 123

Life Sciences 1 150 627

Applied Materials Science 5 518 1 803

Medicine 823 448

Engineering 434 164

Methods & Instrumentation 623 240

Structural Biology 3 507 2 734

Soft Condensed Matter 1 538 648

Totals 27 371 11 822

Fig. 156: Amount of beam time requested, allocated and delivered, 2014 to 2021. N.B., Beam time delivered for 2021 is up to 31 December, it does not include the beam time that will continue to be provided in the remainder of 2021/II.

Fig. 157: Numbers of publications appearing in refereed journals reporting on data collected either

partially or totally at the ESRF, 2014 to 2021. The number of publications for 2021 is not final at

the time of going to press.

Table 6: Shifts of beam time requested and allocated for public user experiments in 2021.