The 2nd Meeting of the European User Offices was held in Hamburg on 5-6 April 2016 and was co-organized by the user offices of DESY Photon Science, EMBL Hamburg and European XFEL. About 20 large-scale research infrastructures and institutions (from Germany, Spain, France, Poland, UK, Sweden, Italy, Switzerland and Hungary; including both internationally-funded and national organizations) were represented by about 50 participants, mainly from user offices and related IT groups. During the meeting, experiences and knowledge were exchanged on a number of issues connected to user services and user operation at synchrotrons, FELs and neutron, muon and laser facilities.
In recent times, the administration landscape for user research in Europe has been evolving rapidly, in a very complex funding situation. In this context, it has become evident that a forum to exchange ideas and support discussion within the user office community in Europe as well as a more formal framework for interaction are needed. After a first meeting in 2014 in Barcelona this network turned out to be as beneficial for user offices at well-established facilities as for those at new ones.
The 2nd Meeting of the European User Offices proved once again to be a useful platform for the discussion on present and upcoming common challenges relevant to user operation, in particular:
- EU projects (submitted or already funded) that aim at providing travel funds for users for Transnational Access and harmonizing access procedures across facilities (supporting e.g. wayforlight.eu, established in the framework of CALIPSO for photon science, but also integrated user access plans in the framework of NMI3 for the neutron and muon community).
- User portal projects, and related software developments required by changing access policies, new infrastructure or relevant upgrades
- User data storage and open access policies, regulations for remote data access
- Remote access to infrastructure, access to offline platforms/laboratories by external users related to beam time, and shipment issues
- Communication formats with and among users: User meetings, workshops, reports; feedback by users via surveys, digital feedback forms
- In addition, the recently adopted European Charter for Access to Research Infrastructures was introduced (via a teleconference with the European Commission).
The participants agreed to continue the series of European User Office meetings on a regular basis. It has not been decided yet when and where the next meeting will take place. However, dedicated tools should make the exchange of information easier within the network in the meantime (meeting web pages and a dedicated mailing list).
