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Special ePIC Collaboration Council Meeting
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Description
Date and Agenda are preliminary.
This is an open CC meeting. All ePIC members are welcome. Connect via Zoom.
Minutes from the ePIC Collaboration Council Meeting on November 25, 2025
Mode : Remote
Agenda : https://indico.bnl.gov/event/30154/
The following minutes refer to the agenda above and only record the discussion and questions not contained in the posted talks.
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Welcome slides by Thomas
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Opens the meeting and approves minutes from the November 7th meeting (91% approve, 3% abstain, 7% proxy, 3% not council members).
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- Presentation of new Convener Candidate by John - no comments or questions.
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- On the point of chain of command communication protocols Barbara asks if it is required to consult the advisor when communicating about student/postdoc responsibilities, and if not she requests this directive to be stated explicitly in the charter. Olga responds that currently the charter considers individual collaborators as independent. Renee raises hand to disagree with addition of language about advisors to the charter and to request that further discussion is defered until after full presentation.
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- Thomas opens floor for discussion with a question about the motivation for the evolution from member in good-standing /not-good-standing in the original charter to author/non-author (as defined by the membership committee) to the new concept proposed. Olga responds that originally in the charter the member in good-standing status was a prerequisite for authorship, but not equal to authorship. The additional requirements for authorship were not spelled out and so this created an ill-defined status and confusion. Instead the committee decided to simply use the language of collaborators, which are associated with institutions and then leave the term author for those collaborators that fullfill the authorship requirements (as defined in policies).
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- Barbara asks why remove the term "member in-good-standing" when it seems to function the same as the proposed changes but requires now changes to propagate down to all subsequent policies. Olga responds that there are two issues concerning the term. First, in the charter, to be a member in-good-standing rquired 6 months of service tasks that were never defined. Barbara counters that if you don't like how the term is defined, just re-define it and and leave the term, that way you don't have to change the language throughout the charter and the policies. Olga responds that the name is unfortunate (possibly because of an associated value judgement?). Barbara states she doesn't see a problem with the term but concedes she can vote her opposition. (note see comment from Peter on language of member-in-good-standing below).
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- Barbara asks to return to the point earlier about the chain of command in communications. She thinks it's really important to make sure the collaboration does not come between a student or postdoc and their supervisor. She proposes to include their supervisor in the term chain of command because otherwise it can be interpreted as only a chain of command within the collaboration. Renee agrees that while it is always nice and helpful to include the advisor in the discussion chain, she opposes making the charter that prescriptive. She argues that the burden of clear communication is on the individual research group - that it is up to the advisor to make clear to the postdocs and graduate students that approval for activities has to come from them. It shouldn't be up to collaborators to figure out who the person's advisor is and include advisors.
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- Wouter notes there are cases where language is proposed to be inserted that is essentially copying what the code of conduct policy already states - for example in the case of suspension of members. But this is inserted before the code-of-conduct is supposed to take over and it is handled outside of the code of conduct policy. And this has been done without input from the code-of-conduct committee or their chairs. It seems a change in scope and Wouter asks for motivation. Olga responded that the committee deemed the new material important enough to promote it to the text of the charter. These are situations the collaboration has already had to address so the committee felt it was necessary to put them front and central. The committee also felt it was not entirely appropriate to outsource everything to the DEI committee since it can only mediate. Suspension is the purview of the council and has to specified in the charter then. Olga acknowledges that many of these changes to the charter will have ripple effects on policies and willl require a revisit once final changes to the charter are voted in. Thomas agrees.
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- Peter notes that the member-in-good standing language was removed in August of 2024 when the membership policy was circulated and approved. He said they had several requests to remove the language because it somehow had the wrong ring to it. So they replaced with authorship and it was approved and it seemed to work for a large group of people. Peter isn't sure we need a collaborator level - seems like a level that isn't completely necessary. How is it different from member? Olga clarifies that in the new proposal the term member only refers to institutions and collaborators refer to people within those institutions. The goal is to not overload the term "member". Individual people cannot be members of the collaboration, only institutions can be members.
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- Olga also clarifies that if an institution member falls short on their requirements then you drop the collaborators within that member institution that are short. Peter points out that the membership policy considered this issue and decided that if collaborators were dropped due to institution shortfall then the collaborator would retain authorship status for a year. This was a grace period used to protect people from being punished for their institutional shortfall. Peter makes the point that much of this was worked out in the membership committee and it isn't clear how this new proposal considers that policy or maps onto it.
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- John Arrington asks about the timeline for elections, specifically the 2 week rule for membership presentations. Would it be possible to have the group present and then hold the election two weeks after? Olga respond that seems possible. The requirement is that the presentation materials need to be present with the vote announcement and the vote announcement needs to happen two weeks before the election.
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- Thomas and Olga have a small discussion about the merits of the current proposal to allow non-voting single collaborators to join ePIC vs having single collaboratros form a cluster. Olga argues that clusters may pose a bigger barrier than just joining as a single person and then growing the group. This at least allows the singe person group to collaborate.
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- Ernst echos Thomas' comment about the need for policy revision once the updated charter is adopted. This is unavoidable anyway as all the policies have expiration dates. Part of the considerations in revising this membership policy in particular is that it is not a given that a collaborator who has fulfilled their commitment to the collaboration is automatically an author on any given paper. We. have not fleshed out what is required to make a collaborator an author on a specific paper. Is it shifts? Is it service on the publication committee? This needs to be addressed in the publications policy. But right now the current membership policy could lead someone to believe they would be an author on a paper, which in reality that may not be the case.
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- Thomas raises questions about ad hoc committees Olga clarifies that approval of a committee requires a simple majority vote which can be conducted at or after a meeting with 2 weeks prior announcement. Thomas points out that it takes 2 weeks to address an urgent issue. Perhaps we should trust elected leadership when they say they need an ad hoc committee before 2 weeks. Olga points out 2 weeks is already a reduction from the current 5 weeks and that it is important to consult the council if you are forming an ad hoc council committee. Thomas points out that the spokesperson can form a committee the next day, after consulting the executive board, so this rule is a bit different for the CC Chairs. Olga responds that this is because the council deals with policies and policies are never as reactive as what a spokesperson deals with.
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- Thomas aks the council to submit additional comments and questions to the Olga and the committee over the next month and we will discuss again at the collaboration council meeting at the end of January.
- Thomas closes the meeting and wishes everyone a Happy Holiday Season.
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