In June the Stanford University Academic Senate voted to accept the new guidelines for proprietary research at SSRL proposed by Burt Richter and Art Bienenstock and previously agreed to by the Stanford Committee on Research. These new guidelines, which are now in effect, increase the period for disclosure of significant intellectual results from 90 days to 5 years after data collection and remove the restriction on Participating Research Teams performing proprietary research during their priority beam time. The guidelines restrict the total amount of proprietary research to 15% of the available beam time and specifically exclude Stanford University faculty and students from direct participation in proprietary research.
Proprietary research is scheduled according to the standard SSRL scheduling procedures and requires submittal of a proposal with sufficient generic information to enable peer and Proposal Review Panel review. These proposals may be designated as proprietary and will be maintained in confidence during the review process as far as is possible. SSRL is in the process of developing guidelines for a rapid turnaround mode for proprietary research for short-term analysis work.
Charges for use of proprietary time are based on full cost
recovery with an 8-hour shift being the minimum unit of time.
In 1995 the cost for non-Federally funded users for 8 hours of
proprietary time is calculated to be $1,204. Guidelines for
proprietary research are available from the SSRL User
Administration Office. A Supplemental Use Agreement must be
executed by SLAC and the user institution before proprietary
research can occur.