participants: Tom Arnold (TA) Francesco Carla’ (FC) Andrew McCluskey (AM) Artur Glavic (AG) Philipp Gutfreund (PG) Binhua Lin (BL)

TA how can we get ORSO formally recognized by the scientific community ? TA points out that IUCR have commissions to promote areas of interest within the IUCR, to crystallographers, to scientists in related areas and to the general public. Should we try to promote the creation of a “reflectometry commission”. Would this be a good way to reach a broader community [note by FC: TA refers to tha Asian community that was marginally involved during the 2019 ORSO meeting]

PG PG thinks that this strategy is working in 2 ways: get recognition from the community allows to be recognized by the facilities but also the other way around. Nevrtheless if ORSO asks the facilities to aknowledge the importance of the initiative, ORSO should be able to prove that the initiative is worth being supported.

AG AG thinks that being aknowledged by facilities is not enough, this approach can be too self-referential and not very “open source” - the support should come from the single people/group in the community in order to legitimate the initiative in front of broader audience.

TA for the moment the people mainly involved in the initiative have been instrument scientists (mainly because this was an easy way to start) - now it’s important to involve the community more.

PG PG thinks that we do not need the initiative to be supported by the IUCR website to be aknowledge by the facilities management - the management would support the project for the normalization anyways (as it is already happening for other initiatives, e.g. mantid)

TA TA suggests to create a mailing list to keep contact in a way that is not violating privacy laws

AG having presence on the web is one thing but it’s not enough to legitimate ORSO - the importance of the project is should be demonstrated by involving experts in the project and pushing out significant publications.

TA why SAS has a commission in the IUCR website and reflectometry does not ?

PG probably because the SAS community is larger than the reflectometry community.

AM what is the point of having formal recognition by IUCR (a commission for reflectometry) ?

[BL joins the meeting]

TA (to BL)

BL [TA makes a quick recap and involves BL in the discussion] BL thinks that it would be useful to have a more official recognition to have more support from the management (in USA) but not 100% sure about this.

TA says that we should better check what is needed to get a commission on the IUCR - maybe the refelctometry community is too small to get the support from IUCR to create a commission. TA asks if the participants think that a memorandum of understanding [MOU] would be useful to justify the time invested by the scientists in ORSO ?

PG asks if MOU would be important for US scientists to justify the time investement ?

BL BL thinks that might be useful but not strictly necessary.

TA what is an appropriate amount of time people should invest in ORSO ? (this clearly depends on the tasks)

AG thinks that the participation to ORSO has the same importance as journal review - the amount of time invested in the ORSO project should be probably reasonable

TA we can draft a MOU to define the kind of activities the participants agree to.

AG AG asks: “why is the MOU important ?”

TA thinks that is important to have a signed agreement between the facilities to refer to that in case there is a problem with management about the time people invest in the project.

BL what is going to be in the MOU ? maybe it’s enough to define the mission of the organization in the MOU so that we can prove to the management that the staff is not wasting time.

TA TA agrees with BL, the MOU is to explain to the management what is the scope of the organization and to show that the time investement in ORSO is legitimate.

FC suggests to keep the document very light and general (define what is the scope of ORSO) to avoid disagreement among the facilities.

AG AG is OK with the MOU but it is not needed for him to get the support for his managers.

TA TA suggests to prepare a draft to share with the rest of the ORSO participants and verify if the vision is shared. if not the document will be scraped.

TA what are the ways we can use to advertise the ORSO website on the web ?

BL BL suggests lighsource.org

TA TA suggests to put a link on the websites of each ORSO TA also state that the best advertisement would be to have the ORSO producing something usefull to make this initiative sustainable [FC note: and to have something to advertise].

TA anything else relevant ?

BL how do we publicize the efforts ?

AM have a session at the SXNS conference in 2021…

BL BL asks if there is any other meetings where we can organize an event for the community or advertise ORSO.

TA TA suggests that users meetings are a good platform - a good idea would be to organize a satellite event during a users meeting in USA, EUROPE, AUSTRALIA, ASIA in 2021.

TA also notes that there are a number of schools and we should make sure that people involved in lectures/organization are aware of the ORSO initiative.

TA TA asks if ORSO should also get involved in working with the GISAXS community

FC FC states thate in CANSAS there is already a working group on grazing incidence

AG AG thinks that we should look into new techniques only when te ORSO project will have accomplished something, at the moment is too premature.

PG PG says that during the data analysis session a similar issue was discussed and it was made clear that GISANS/GISAXS are excluded from the discussion at the moment. Moreover, the GISANS and GISAXS community are already in touch - so this is probably out of the scope. Nevertheless wide angle and grazing incidence diffraction are techinicques that could be of some interest for ORSO.

AG AG thinks that while there is an affinity between small angle scattering and reflectivity, grazing incidence diffraction is too far as a technique from relfectivity and it’s not a good thing to look for a common standardization.

FC thinks that is too premature to have the discussion about getting ORSO involved with small angle scattering and/or grazing incidence diffraction. FC also underlines that despite being experimentally different GIXD and XRR have the same users base - so might be interesting to consider in the future if ORSO could do anything for the standardization of GIXD or GIWAXS data.

TA TA summarized the main point emerged during the discussion:

draft of MOU advertisement at Users meetings, conferences and relevant websites TA asks if do a list of the ORSO members should be added to the website ?

AM AM suggests to ask to people if they want their name of the website.

AG AG suggests also to add people in working group when added to website.

meeting ends.