Who makes using Synchrotron light at MAX IV completely free?

A question we always get is, how much will it cost for you to do experiments at MAX IV? The simple answer is, users don’t have to pay a cent. To get access to MAX IV scientists must present their most important scientific question to an international panel of experts who select the best projects to come and do experiments here. Only by passing this hurdle can users get access to MAX IV. After doing experiments users must then publish their results in the open scientific literature. By doing this, we make sure that the results are available to the public who funded the research in the first place. This means that the Swedish tax-payer gets to take advantage of all the cutting-edge research done at MAX IV. They get to learn fundamental truths about the world around them and feel proud of the world leading facility that they build. Some of them are researchers themselves or work in related industry and can incorporate the results in their own work.

Our international committees of experts visited MAX IV recently to meet with the User Office and beamline managers to discuss the capability of our instruments in the light of several upgrades carried out over the summer and to go through the submitted applications. Site visits like this are vital to the success of the of the application process, helping the committee to have an intricate understanding of the capabilities as well as the limitations of MAX IV. While we want to accept the best scientific proposals, it is no good if the experiments simply cannot be carried out on our instruments. Each committee for every scientific discipline spends a full day at MAX IV, inspecting the equipment, listening to staff and discussing science, but most importantly, going through the proposals.

So who makes MAX IV completely free? It clearly wouldn’t be possible without funding from the Swedish tax-payers and government. Likewise, the team of dedicated permanent staff here in Lund work hard to make sure MAX IV can always produce the brightest synchrotron light in the world. However, it’s too easy to overlook the contribution of outside experts. We rely on them to choose the best applications in order to produce the best science and deliver on our promises to the Swedish tax-payer.