The European Committee for Future Accelerators (ECFA) and the High Energy and Particle Physics Division of the European Physical Society (EPS-HEPP) have jointly prepared a document (see below to download it) to help professional committees to assess the achievements of individual particle physicists from large experimental collaborations. The document is motivated by the need to explain to scientists from outside the community of experimental high-energy physics the way these collaborations, of few hundred to few thousand members, are organized in order to design, build and carry out the scientific program of large-scale experiments.

Originally the issue was approached in 2008 by the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) in a document entitled “Assessment of Individual Achievements in Large Collaborations in Particle Physics” (IUPAP C11 Document 19-v1). The present document follows the same spirit, however it takes into account the practices de facto adopted by the various international collaborations, that do no follow “à la lettre” the recommendations of IUPAP. The document also provides recommendations to particle physicists how to prepare for evaluations.

With this letter ECFA and EPS-HEPP are asking you to disseminate the document to bodies for which it might be of interest.

Yours sincerely,

Professor Halina Abramowicz, ECFA Chair
Professor Thomas Lohse, Chair of the EPS-HEPP Board

The document is publicly available from the CERN document server.