Last updated 2025-10-24 Polaris beta version.

Submit your Proposal

Once you are happy with the details of your Proposal, and it has passed the server side validation checks you may submit it for review. Please notice that submission it restricted to the Principal Investigator only, Co-Investigators cannot submit proposals.

The proposal submission process consists of several steps.

Step 1 - Select the Proposal Cycle

Here you select the Proposal Cycle from the drop-down menu to which you wish to submit your Proposal. Once selected click Next step to continue to the next step.

Step 2 - Validation Check

Server side validation checks currently include:

• at least one Observation added
  • which requires at least one Target and at least one Technical Goal
• a successfully compiled Justification PDF
  • which includes having non-empty Justification texts

You can compile an "empty" Justification PDF i.e., empty texts, but this will fail the validation check. Notice that if your justifications texts are short (< 256 characters) then this check will emit a warning to that effect, as your justification texts should be longer, but it will not fail the check.

As we develop the server side validation checks we expect this list to potentially expand.

If a Proposal doesn't pass the validation checks then you will be presented with the following page for Step 2 in the submission process, which lists the problems.

Here we have created another proposal but haven't added any Targets, Technical Goals, or Observations. We also have not written any Justification texts or attempted to compile the PDF document. Please notice that the messages are links that will take you to the relevant page in Polaris so you can address the issues. In this case the Next step button is disabled.

A Proposal that does pass these validation checks will be shown the following page.

Again click Next step to continue to step 3.

Step 3 - Select Observing Modes for your Observations

Here you select the Observing Modes you want for your Observations. Notice that the selectable data here depends on your choice of Proposal Cycle. For example, having chosen the eMerlin proposal cycle (generally named "Cycle N", where N represents the cycle number) you can choose between L-Band, C-Band, and K-Band Observing Modes. You may either select a single Observing Mode for all the Observations in your proposal, most conveniently done by selecting the mode in the Observing Mode Details section and clicking the Set for all button, or select the mode for each observation separately. Once each of your Observations has a mode you may proceed to step 4.

The "eye" button in the Observing Mode Details section will toggle a display of the details of the selected mode. For example, the eMerlin modes show details of the receivers and the correlator involved, and will show which of the telescopes will be used for the observation in the ideal case.

Step 4 - Review selections before submitting

This is your last chance to ensure all the details selected are correct for your proposal before you submit it to the chosen Proposal Cycle. If you do need to change something then you may go Back and make the desired changes.

Once you are happy with all the details you can click on the Submit proposal button, and all being well, you should be presented with the following screen.

You will also be sent a confirmation email outlining that you have just successfully submitted your proposal to the cycle of choice. This email is sent to all investigators associated with the proposal.

For your information, when your Observing Proposal is submitted it is copied into a new Submitted Proposal, in essence creating a "snapshot" of your proposal at the point of submission. The Submitted Proposal is a different entity to your Observing Proposal and is non-editable. You may continue to edit your Observing Proposal without effecting the Submitted Proposal. If you need to update a Submitted Proposal then you must first withdraw that proposal from the cycle (see Withdrawing a Submitted Proposal) and resubmit your edited Observing Proposal.

Clicking on Done will take you back to the Overview page for the proposal.

Withdrawing a Submitted Proposal

The Principal Investigator may withdraw a submitted proposal from a Proposal Cycle up to the submission deadline for that cycle. The withdraw button is located on the user's homepage, one per cycle to which a proposal has been submitted, shown in the screenshot below.

You may submit and withdraw a proposal to a particular cycle ad nauseam, but do try to not over do it, for your own sake as much as anyone else's.