User and Active Project Statistics

To uphold the value of user statistics, the Office of Science has established a set of shared core principles for defining and counting users. These principles, along with definitions for each user facility, can be found at The Office of Science national scientific user facilities web page. For purposes of reporting EMSL user data to DOE, EMSL tracks the number of active projects, active users by project, user institutions by project, as well as the number of distinct users and User institutions.

User Definition: A user is defined as an individual who makes use of EMSL resources. For each fiscal year, each User will be categorized as one of the following:

• Onsite user: An individual who is a member of an approved research team, has signed all required user agreements, and is physically present using an EMSL capability, at least once during the reporting period, to conduct research on an active peer-reviewed project.
• Remote user: An individual who is a member of an approved research team, has signed all required user agreements, and has been granted authority by the principal investigator to participate remotely in experimental planning, execution (including remote operation of instrumentation/computing hardware or engaging with EMSL staff on sample submission/delivery), and data analysis on an active peer-reviewed project.
• Data user: An individual who registers for an EMSL user account to download EMSL data.

User Counts: For distinct user counts, an individual is counted only once per fiscal year despite the number of projects they have. When a user qualifies in more than one category in a fiscal year, EMSL follows a hierarchical scheme, in which Onsite takes precedence over Remote and Data, and Remote takes precedence over Data. EMSL staff and Resource Owners are not included in user counts.

For reporting the numbers of users or institution types by proposal type, users with multiple User proposal types will be counted once per each proposal type. For example, if a user has three Call Responder projects and one Capacity (Limited Scope) project, the User will be counted once under the Call Responders column and once under the Capacity (Limited Scope) column. However, only distinct users are included when reporting the total number of users per fiscal year. EMSL Staff and Resource Owner proposals are not included when reporting User proposal data.

Reports contain year-to-date counts, unless otherwise specified by DOE. EMSL resources are defined as all resources purchased or co-purchased by the User Program and all resources located in space that EMSL maintains or manages.