General Proposals and Graduate Student Proposals Intended to Be Reviewed in the Industrial Application Field

Several significant points are to be noted for General Proposals and Graduate Student Proposals whose intended field for reviews is the industrial application. Please read through the instructions on this page carefully before submitting proposals.

Contents

1. Proposal Review Criteria and Application Requirements

The review for industrial application proposals regards the following two points as important among the review criteria for selecting a scientific and technical value in the review items.

• c. Expected results have significance and potential as industrial technology.
• d. The proposed research has social significance and will contribute to the social economy.

2. Proposal Application Requirements

Please note that the following three conditions must be met for General Proposals for industrial application require the following three matters, 2-1~3. Graduate Student Proposals require only the matter of 2-3, while 2-1 and 2-2 are not mandatory in this case.

2.1 Affiliation of Project Leader/Collaborator

It is required to be specified in the application for the proposal that the project member of the proposal includes at least one person who is an employee of a private company or affiliated institution as the project leader or the collaborator. Affiliated institutions, by our definition, are (1) public testing laboratories and (2) incorporated foundations/associations whose primary business is contract services of experiments/research for private companies.
Note: We categorize national/private universities, independent administrative institutions, special public corporations, and public corporations as neither (1) nor (2).

2.2 Industrial Application Proposal Report (IAPR)

In addition to an Experiment Summary Report, which users are required to submit online within 60 days after their experiment, we ask you to submit Industrial Application Proposal Reports (IAPRs) by the deadlines which are designated for each term. The IAPRs are published both online and papers, summarizing outcomes from General Proposals for industrial applications in order to promote industrial application of SPring-8 efficiently. The report’s content can be equivalent to the Experiment Summary Report, but we ask you to prepare the report in the prescribed format for publication in printed form. After submission, the senior coordinator of the Industrial Application and Partnership Division may ask you for corrections of obvious errors (such as typos or deviations from the format) or revisions of expressions to improve readability for readers. However, we will not suggest revisions of the report’s content because there is no peer review process.
Please refer to the UI website below for details on the Industrial Application Proposal Form (report format, submission deadline, etc.).

　　　◆Industrial Application Proposal Report (IAPR)

[Relation between Industrial Application Proposal Report (IAPR) and SPring-8/SACLA Research Report (SRR)]

If you wish to submit your research outcomes in the SRRs, you need to notify the Users Office of your will when you submit an IAPR. In this case, the publication of your IAPR will be on hold. Then, please submit it to the SRR and have the report peer-reviewed. The SRR will be reprinted in an issue of the IAPRs instead of your original IAPR. We do not treat your IAPR in this way without (a) your notification to the Users Office upon the submission or (b) your submission for the SRR by the date of issue of the IAPRs.

2.3　Publication of SPring-8/SACLA Research Report (SRR)

Please note that there is a submission rule for publication of SPring-8/SACLA Research Report in cases where proposals whose outcomes you wish to publish were reviewed in the industrial application field.
As of November 1, 2022, the rule has changed as below:

[before]
Users are required to submit at least one article for one proposal.

[after]
It is permitted that multiple proposals accepted after the 2023A term are compiled in one paper. In the case of proposals accepted up to the 2022B term, users must submit at least one article for one proposal.

3．Notes on the Preparation of Application Form

The review subcommittee for Industrial Application will focus on the following points regarding the content of the item in the abstract of the proposal, “ Describe the significance, purpose, feature and expected results of the proposed research”.

• A. Industrial fields and businesses targeted by the proposed research
• B. The technical problem to be solved through the proposed research
• C. Significance of solving this technical problem in the industrial field or business being researched
  　　(What contribution is expected to be made to targeted industrial field or business by solving this technical problem? What is the importance of this contribution?)
• D. Details of the research which the applicant has conducted to solve the targeted problem
  　　(What experiments have been conducted? What informations have been obtained from the experiments? What informations needed for solving the targeted problem are lacked?)
• E. Details of the information which you intend to obtain in the proposal, the reason why the information is necessary for solving the targeted problem, and how to solve the targeted problem by utilizing this information
• F. The experimental plan to obtain the desired information and the reason why the desired information is expected to be obtained through the proposed experimental plan
  　　(What characteristics of the samples are needed to be measured? What data are expected to be obtained in the proposed experiments? What analysis of the data is required in order to obtain the desired information?)
• G. In the case where the proposal is to be carried out by more than one organizations such as industry-academia, industry-industry, and academia-academia, the role of each organization in the research of this proposal
  　　(Roles in the execution of the proposal and the policy to feedback the results of this proposal to the research plan/business of each organization)

It is important for the review if the above points are clearly explained in the proposal or not. Furthermore, the referees who review your proposal are not necessarily experts in the research field of your proposal, because the review by the subcommittee for industrial application encompasses various research fields. We recommend that you make your applications understandable to researchers outside your field as much as possible.
Please also note the followings.

◯Points concerned for item F:

• Please note that if the informations of samples (sample name, composition, etc.) are not specified clearly, the proposal will not be recognized as a non-proprietary proposal and may not be accepted.
• We strongly recommend you to cleary explain the basis of selecting samples, specifying the characteristics of each sample and the information expected to be obtained by comparing the data of the samples. It should be effective to convince the referees of expected achievement of your proposal. Especially, in the case of the proposal to be required a large amount of machine time for measurements of a large number of samples, the point mentioned above should be important. Even if the number of samples is too large to describe in detail, we recommend you to describle the policy for selecting samples at least, so that it should make the validity of the experimental plan more persuasive.
• In the case where you have never carried out the experiment planed in your proposal at the intended Beamline, you must contact the Beamline Scientist before submitting proposals, in order to plan the experiment checking its technical feasibility. If the experiment you planed has been carried out at the other beamline previously, there should be some technical problems in conducting the experiment because the features of the instruments of one beamline should be different from that of another. Also, even if it is in similar to experiments carried out by other users at the intended Beamline in the past, there can be technical problem to be considered to achieve the pupose of your proposal.

◯Points concerned for item G:

At least one person who belongs to an institution equivalent to an industry must be included. Please note that if the project leader is not a member of this private company or an industry-equivalent organization, and if the appropriate content of the information in this item G is not clearly indicated, the proposal may not be adopted as not meeting the criteria for review by the Industrial Application Subcommittee.

4．Contact

1. Information Desk for Industrial Application
The coordinators of Industrial Application and Partnership Division are available for consultation. If you have questions about the feasibility of your experiment, research methods, research planning, etc..

2. Information Desk for Procedure of Proposal Application