Structural Biology - BAG

MX BAG proposals may be submitted twice a year at the regular proposal call deadlines. MX-BAG proposals are evaluated and recommended for approval by the C10 Proposal Review Panel that reviews proposals for all the Structural Biology beamlines.

If accepted:

• A MX-BAG status will be awarded for an initial period of 2 years.
• A MX-BAG continuation proposal must be submitted each year following the initial acceptance.
• The beamtime request in the initial and continuation proposals should cover a period of 6 months only, NOT one year. The second (interim) 6-months allocation for the year in question will be automatically assigned based on this, taking also into account the overall beamtime available and the evaluation by the Proposal Review Panel of the MX-BAG performance.
• Any modification in the MX-BAG activity or beamtime request (in particular the projects covered, the number of shifts per 6-month period, the list of MX-BAG members) should be described in the continuation proposal with clear justification in case of a modified beamtime request.
• Reporting and evaluation will be made on a yearly basis, with annual progress reports supporting the continuation request for evaluation by the Proposal Review Panel - see the Reporting section below.
• MX-BAGs members are not permitted to apply for additional time on the relevant beamlines via the rolling proposal mechanism - any additional time required must be requested through the BAG.

As for all ESRF proposal types, the MX-BAG proposal consists of 3 parts:

• Online proposal form
• Sample Forms
• Project Description Template

The project description template consists of a Global Summary of the projects to be undertaken by each Principal Investigator within the MX-BAG and must be uploaded as a pdf file to the proposal. This document is limited to 2 pages in length.

The minimum beamtime request for a Crystallography and BioSAXS MX-BAG is 9 shifts per 6-month period. For groups requiring less than this, the rolling proposal access mechanism should be used.

There are 2 BAG groups:
Group 1:

• 1^st March deadline each year: submits an MX-BAG continuation proposal and MX-BAG Annual Report,
• 10^th September deadline each year: nothing to submit, an interim 6-month allocation is awarded.

Group 2:

• 10^th September deadline each year: submits an MX-BAG continuation proposal and MX-BAG Annual Report,
• 1^st March deadline each year: nothing to submit, an interim 6-month allocation is awarded.

The BAG Principal Investigator (and Alternative Contact if one has been named) are reminded by email 2 months before each deadline of what is expected.

If a BAG requires a significant increase or decrease in beamtime allocation during an interim period, the PI should write an email or letter for the proposal deadline, describing the new request and justification, and send this by email to the ESRF User Office.

As for all ESRF proposals, each BAG must be identified with a single spokesperson, who is named as Principal Investigator, along with a list of Co-Investigators. The Principal Investigator must be affiliated to a scientific institution of an ESRF Member or Associate country. Exceptions from this provision require prior agreement from the ESRF Management.

The list of investigators must comprise at least 3 independent research groups, and may include groups from outside the ESRF Member or Associate countries. An ESRF scientist may participate as one of the scientific investigators in a BAG as long as he/she is directly scientifically involved in the BAG research, but not as its Principal Investigator (exceptions from this provision require prior agreement from the ESRF Management).

The Principal Investigator is the single contact point for the ESRF and is responsible for submitting:

• The new and continuation BAG proposals
• The A-forms
• The BAG annual reports

Proposers requesting BAG status for the first time must submit a “New proposal”.
In the User Portal, click on ‘New proposal’ then ‘Structural Biology : BAG’, choose the ‘Experiment group’ type, then under ‘Lineage’ select ‘New proposal’.

In the ‘Publications’ tab of the online proposal form, you will be expected to provide a brief description of the scientific background of each Co-Investigator, and it is particularly important to ensure that the publications listed demonstrate the activities, research interests and expertise of the BAG members as this information has been requested by the proposal reviewers.

To ensure any ESRF publications are properly displayed, please see the “Publications” page. For new or recent ESRF users with no or very few ESRF publications, it is very important to list non-ESRF publications relevant for the proposal. You must list up to 5 publications per investigator, published during the last 5 years.

Proposers who already have a BAG proposal running and who are reminded to submit a continuation proposal along with an Annual Report, must submit a “Continuation” proposal. In the User Portal, click on ‘New proposal’ then ‘Structural Biology : BAG’, choose the ‘Experiment group’ type, then under ‘Lineage’ select ‘Continuation’.

In the list of your existing proposals that appears, please ensure you select your current BAG proposal number and then create the proposal as usual (complete the online proposal form, add sample sheets and upload the completed project description file).

For BAG continuation proposals, the report on the past year of activity is as important as the proposal describing the future year of activity. Therefore, before the continuation proposal can be submitted you must also complete and upload the BAG Annual Report for your current BAG proposal number. To do this, see the instructions in the “Reporting” section below. Once the BAG Annual Report exists, you can submit your BAG continuation proposal which will automatically combine the proposal form and the BAG Annual Report into a single pdf file constituting the BAG continuation proposal.

Note that it is possible to start working on the Annual Report independently to the creation of the continuation proposal. However, we advise to wait until the reminder email has been sent by the ESRF User Office (6-8 weeks before the deadline) to ensure that the correct actions are taken and that the beamtime use statistics are as recent as possible before writing the content of the report.

For interim BAGs (i.e. those who are not requested to submit a continuation proposal and BAG annual report), the beamtime will be allocated by the proposal review panel based on the previous 6-month allocation, the overall beamtime available for the next scheduling period and the scientific quality of the last continuation proposal. The allocation will be made automatically and communicated to the PI via the decision letter that will be sent once the proposal round results are finalised (typically around 1^st June and 1^st December).

Once MX-BAG status has been awarded, MX-BAGs must submit an Annual Report describing their activity and results over the past year. This Annual Report will be combined with the MX-BAG continuation proposal so that reviewers have a report on past activity and performance along with the request to continue the MX-BAG activity for a further year.

A MX-BAG continuation proposal cannot be submitted if the Annual Report on the past year of activity has not been submitted.

The MX-BAG Annual Report consists of 2 parts:

• A statistics part concerning the past year of activity that is automatically generated from data in the ESRF SMIS database;
• An activity report part which consists of a template to be downloaded and completed by the MX-BAG PI, AC and CIs, and uploaded as a pdf file by the MX-BAG PI or AC.

On final submission of the MX-BAG Annual Report, the statistics part is updated with the latest data and both parts are combined to produce the final document.

Note that it is possible to start working on the Annual Report independently to the creation of the continuation proposal. However, we advise to wait until the reminder email has been sent by the ESRF User Office (6-8 weeks before the deadline) to ensure that the correct actions are taken and that the beamtime use statistics are as recent as possible before writing the content of the report.

• Who can submit a MX-BAG Annual Report?

Only the Principal Investigator and Alternative Contact (if one is named) can submit a MX-BAG Annual Report. However, the statistics part can be downloaded by any of the Co-Investigators, and once an activity report file has been uploaded by the PI or AC, that file can be downloaded by any of the Co-Investigators. Once the annual report has been submitted, it is no longer editable and can be downloaded by all participants of the MX-BAG.

• How to create a MX-BAG Annual Report?

In your list of ‘My submitted proposals’, click on the ‘Reports’ button for your current BAG proposal number and select ‘Proposal report’ from the pull-down menu. This will take you to a page where you can download a pdf of the statistics part, upload the completed activity report part and finally submit the BAG Annual Report which combines both documents and updates the statistics part with the latest data.

• MX-BAG Annual Report statistics

The statistics part of the Annual Report is automatically generated from data in the ESRF SMIS database. The statistics concern beamtime usage, BAG participants (PI, CIs and users) and publications from the BAG in the past year of activity.

Which beamtime usage stats are listed?

The beamtime usage stats that are shown in the statistics part of the BAG Annual Report correspond to the beamtime used in the year preceding the MX-BAG report submission, so the last 2 scheduling periods. As an example,

• MX-BAG report submission in September 2024: reporting period is 2023/II and 2024/I, so  from August 2023 to July 2024,
• MX-BAG report submission in March 2025: reporting period is 2024/I and 2024/II, so  from March 2024 to February 2025.

Note that, due to the schedule of yearly submission for MX-BAG proposals and the 6-month delay before the new BAG proposal number is used for scheduling, the beamtime used by your BAG over the past year was scheduled under 2 different BAG numbers: the most recent scheduling period comes under your current BAG number, while the preceding scheduling period comes under your previous BAG proposal number. You do not need to worry about this, the automatic extraction of stats takes this into account.

Which BAG participants are listed?

The BAG participants that are shown in the statistics part of the BAG Annual Report correspond to:

• all BAG participants of your current BAG number (PI, CIs and users).

Even though the beamtime usage stats correspond to the first 6 months of beamtime of your current BAG proposal and the last 6 months of beamtime of your previous BAG proposal, the list of BAG participants only concerns those participants involved in the current proposal.

Which publications are listed?

The publications that are shown in the statistics part of the BAG Annual Report correspond to those that correspond to ALL of the following criteria:

• they must be listed in the 'My Publications' lists of all BAG participants of your current BAG number (PI, CIs and users),
• they must be linked in the ESRF Library database to one of the ESRF-EMBL Grenoble Structural Biology beamlines on which your BAG has had beamtime in the past 4 years,
• they must have been published since the year of the BAG proposal submission to the year of the BAG report submission (for example, for BAG reporting in 2024 this means publication years taken into account are 2023 and 2024).

Note that, in the future, the BAG proposal number to which the publication is linked will also be used as a criterion for automatic reporting of publications.

It is therefore imperative that all BAG participants create their My Publications list in their User Portal account profile and check that the publications are associated to the BAG proposal number(s) and the beamline(s) on which data were collected. If these data are not complete, please send the information to the ESRF Library so that it can be updated, otherwise the publication will not appear in the report.

Templates Required

Maximum size of MX BAG project description: 2 pages
Maximum size of MX BAG Annual Report: