Terms of Use for the PSI large scale user facilities

The Paul Scherrer Institute operates five large scale user facilities on site. Those are:

• the synchrotron light source SLS
• the X-ray free electron laser facility SwissFEL
• the continuous spallation neutron source SINQ
• the Swiss muon source SμS
• the facilities for Particle Physics CHRISP including a source for ultracold neutrons UCN and a proton irradiation facility PIF

You must observe the PSI safety regulations applicable during any stay at PSI. For that purpose each visitor of one of the facilities mentioned above needs to pass an online safety training every two years. The training is integrated into the badge application procedure via the DUO system. In addition it is required that each team leader of an experimental group signs the protocol of the beamline specific safety introduction provided by the local contacts before the experiment.

If you bring your own equipment to perform the experiment, you are responsible that it can be operated safely and that it complies with the Swiss laws. If devices have to be installed from PSI employees, the submission of corresponding proof (e.g. declaration of conformity, risk assessment) can be requested.

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All specifications made during the registration in the PSI Digital User Office DUO, during the proposal submission or later must be certainly true to the best of your knowledge. The samples that will be investigated during the experiment must correspond to sample declarations in the proposal. Any deviation must be declared to the local contact or the facility management well ahead of the experiment.

You need to respect the PSI guidelines for research integrity and good scientific practice.

You must comply to the directive about use and monitoring of IT resources at PSI.

PSI has defined a data policy for research data according to the principles of "transparency" and "open data". It pertains to the ownership of, the curation of and access to experimental data and Metadata collected and/or stored by PSI research infrastructure. Acceptance of this policy is one condition for the award of access to the PSI research infrastructures and also a binding part of each PSI employment agreement.

There are certain requirements that must be fulfilled by publications based on experiments at the different user facilities of PSI. You are therefore obliged to read and follow our publication policies linked below:

• SLS and SwissFEL
• SINQ
• SμS
• CHRISP

You must take out your own illness and accident insurance (e.g. through travel insurance if not insured by your home institute or employer). You are not entitled to insurance or social security benefits from PSI.

For SμS and SINQ PSI follows the policy that remote operation of experiments without physical presence is not offered. With the acceptance of the terms of use SμS and SINQ users therefore confirm that the necessary funding for travelling to PSI is available and that at least one member per team will attend the experiment in person. In very rare well justified cases exceptions may be possible. But that needs to be discussed with and agreed by the instrument scientists well in advance of proposal submission. The reason is lack of local staff and the intention of PSI to actively maintain the knowledge about neutron scattering and muon spin spectroscopy among the user community.

For CHRISP and the photon facilities remote operation of experiments might be possible up to a certain extend. In any case it is mandatory to discuss the intention of a remote experiment again well in advance of proposal submission with the instrument/beamline scientists.

The agreement on further regulations is mandatory in special cases, e.g. if access is required to

• the SwissFEL facilities
• SINQ Sample Preparation WetLab
  • Operation Procedure
• the SLS chemistry laboratory WSLA/028