STAR Graduate Student Thesis Policy:
Draft #1

  1. The STAR policy on student theses is based on the principle that any collaborator is free to delve into any aspect of the data. The main purpose of the policy is to state expectations about communication within the collaboration.
  2. The basic arbiter of what constitutes a thesis is the thesis advisor.
  3. PWG convenors maintain lists of analysis topics in their areas of interest which are not yet covered by anyone (includes students, postdocs, and other categories of collaborator).
  4. Students and their advisors are free to choose a project from any PWG convenor's list, or to choose a project that is not listed.
  5. The chair of the STAR thesis committee works with the Analysis Coordinator to maintain a descriptive list of all ongoing analysis projects, including names of all students and non-students working on those projects. The STAR council member from each institution is expected to submit the necessary information to keep these listings up-to-date.
  6. It is anticipated that there will always be many unpursued analysis projects in STAR, and many new analysis opportunities will open up every year as new detector subsystems come online, luminosity improves, etc. The likelihood of independent analyses with a large degree of overlap is small and will probably decrease with time. However, STAR policy does not explicitly discourage duplicate analyses.
  7. In the event that there is a large degree of overlap between two independent analyses, it is the task of an ad hoc godparent committee appointed by the spokesperson to draw on material from the independent analyses and assemble the manuscript for a journal publication.
  8. In overlap cases involving a student thesis project, it is normally expected that the student's advisor is a member of the godparent committee.   Do we need to add here a reminder about continuity of membership as per Rene's suggestion? I'm not sure how to phrase it. Your specific suggestions are needed!
  9. Each student who uses STAR data for his/her PhD thesis is expected to have contributed to the community service aspect of STAR in a significant way. Usually this will be an amount of work roughly equivalent to one third to one half the total research effort for a typical PhD.   Perhaps we will remove the last sentence from the final policy, but it is useful for it to be there at least through the stage of STAR Council discussion.
  10. Council members are responsible for ensuring that thesis students from their own institutions satisfy community service expectations.
  11. The STAR roster should include a flag to identify students who intend to use STAR data for a PhD thesis.   Does this need to be written into the STAR policy? If not, it's here just as a reminder to ask Liz to do it.
  12. The STAR thesis committee should review the operation of this policy 18 months after it is put into effect.

Return to STAR thesis committee page

July 17,  2000