European Crystallographic Association - Informations for the SIG Officers

Information for the SIGs' OFFICERS

Revised guidelines for the chairs of microsymposia at ECM congresses

Each invited speaker is not allowed to give a talk in more than one microsymposium (MS). However, an invited speaker is allowed to present one poster as main author and other posters as co-author.
It is highly recommended that both gender and nationality issues are taken into account in the selection of speakers in order to have the widest possible spectrum.
There should be no more than one speaker from one affiliation in a given MS.
Chairpersons are not allowed to be speakers in their own MS. However, they may speak in other MS if invited or selected.
No honorarium or refund of expenses and no waiving of the registration fee can be offered by ECA or ECMs to MS chairpersons or MS invited speakers. The latter restriction is based on the necessity of supporting young researchers to the largest possible extent in order to favour the growth of the crystallographic discipline. However, this does not prevent MS chairpersons from raising funds, should they wish to do so to support their selected speakers with grants or other types of sponsorships, provided that this is done in consultation with the organising committee.

SIG officers mailing list

The officers of each SIG are subscribed to the SIG Officers mailing list, which is used to facilitate communication between the Executive Committee and the SIGs.

Guidelines for setting up and administering an ECA-SIG website and mailing list

According to ECA Executive Committee rules, each SIG should have a website and a mailing list to promote SIG activities and membership. The following is a non-exhaustive list of options.

Hosting

Normally, any University or research institute can offer web hosting with FTP access on simple request. The SIG webmaster should contact her/his IT responsible to get support.

In the unlikely case that no hosting is possible in an institution, contact ECA webmaster to arrange a remote hosting at ecanews.org. This option has some limitations for security reasons: typically, the SIG webmaster will not have direct access to the web server but only to a local server which will automatically replicate the content of the web folder on the web server periodically (normally, once per day, at night). The SIG webmaster will also have to fax a signed agreement about confidentiality of the SSH (not FTP) access will be granted.

Website address

A SIG website should be reachable as sigxx.ecanews.org (xx being the number of the SIG), whatever is the real address of the website. To do that, a small modification of the web server configuration should be done: contact ECA webmaster. For websites hosted at ecanews, this will be done locally and the SIG webmaster will not have to care.

Website content

A SIG website should at least present:

a mission statement
the current officers
list of past and forthcoming SIG activities
list of members
contact addresses

This content is useful not only to attract interest and new members, but also to the Executive Committee to retrieve information about the SIG activity.

Most important: the SIG website must be kept up-to-date: monthly is advised and a trimester/semester update will be the minimum acceptable.

Website accessibility

A website is expected to deliver content and information accessible to the largest public and should be accessible with most browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, Safari, Chrome, just to mention the most used). Sophisticated tools like extended Javascript may give a professional look to the website but quite often they reduce accessibility, resulting in browser discrimination and longer loading time: it should be avoided by less experienced webmasters. The golden rule «the simpler the better» should be kept in mind. Compliancy to the W3 Consortium (www.w3c.org) standards, although not compulsory, is recommended.

Webmaster

Normally, the secretary of the SIG is expected to be the webmaster, but this task can be delegated to one of the other officers or, if none of them has experience in the field, to a fourth person.

Mailing list

A mailing list is an important tool to keep the SIG members informed of the SIG activities and news and to get feedback from them. Several options exist to run a mailing list

Institutions often run a mailing server (mailman, majordomo, sympa, listservc) Contact the IT responsible and ask her/him to create a SIG mailing list
In case an institution does not run a mailing server, it is possible to get hosting from IUCr – see http://www.iucr.org/iucr-top/lists/ One can get a mailing list on simple request, but the number of features offered is limited
Third party free mailing lists as Yahoo groups (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/) are a good compromise, provided one puts new members on moderation, to avoid spam. Approval of new members by a moderator (normally, the SIG secretary) is also suggested.
Another possibility to keep in touch with SIG members is a BBS (Bullettin Board), i.e. a discussion forum. One can add a forum (for example, http://www.phpbb.org/ or http://punbb.informer.com/) to a SIG website quite easily, provided one has write access on the root of the web folder on the web server. Otherwise, ask help to the web server administrator. Drawback of a forum is that members get notification only if they subscribe to the forum or active an RSS feed, while messages from a mailing list reach every member and is therefore recommended. This option is not available if hosting at ecanews.org is requested but a mailing list can be created.