Conditions of participation
The challenge is open to everyone (above 18 years old) and there are no fees involved.
Members of the SKAO teams that have contributed to the simulation cannot compete.
Participants from any country and any institution can compete.
Participation in the challenge implies acceptance of the competition rules by each participant.
Challenge registration will open through this website. There will be a deadline for registration, after which participation will not be possible.
Teams
We advise participants to compete in teams. There is no minimum or maximum limit for the team size; however, allocation of computational facilities will be conditional on the teams being properly resourced. Every team will designate a team leader.
Each team must join the competition using a dedicated registration form, that will be made available on this website, and accept the competition rules when joining the challenge.
Participants are allowed to join an existing team during the competition.
Any team or participant can request to withdraw from the competition.
Team leaders
The team leader is in charge of providing any material and information that will be required.
The team leader is also in charge of confirming people leaving/joining the team as well as requesting withdrawal of the whole team from the challenge.
Team leaders can be changed upon request.
Accessing and processing the data
The dataset (of total size over 1TB, containing measurement set as well as imaging products) will be made available through a set of designated computing resources, where teams are also encouraged to carry out their processing.
Details on the available resources, on the software environment and on options for deploying pipelines will be made available on the dedicated area of this website.
Each team will be assigned a particular computing resource; in allocating the resources we will be guided by the team's computational requirements, as specified at challenge registration.
The total resources allocated are to be intended as uniformly spread over the six months period of SDC3 foregrounds. Therefore, delay in starting the analysis effectively reduces the amount of resources available. The resources could be withdrawn in case of lack of usage.
Participants should acknowledge the SDC3 computing facilities they used in any communication and publication regarding SDC3.
Submissions and evaluation
Submissions (consisting of cylindrically-averaged clean EoR power spectra) will be accepted throughout the duration of the challenge and will be scored through a scoring service.
In order to be successful, submissions should strictly comply with the requested format.
The scoring service will be made available upon the start of the challenge. Before the challenge deadline, the scoring service will only return a confirmation of receipt and validation of the submission's format. Final scores will be made available only at the challenge deadline and will be based on each team's latest submission to the scoring service.
The Challenge winner will be awarded based on the leaderboard at the deadline. Submissions sent after the deadline will not be considered.
Results/Publications
The SDC3 leaderboard containing the final scores will be automatically published on this website once the challenge is closed.
We reserve the right to publish details such as the name of the teams, their participants and affiliations, as well as their final scores.
After the completion of the challenge, we will explore the possibility of publishing results and methods in a scientific article, in collaboration with the participating teams.
Support
Communication with the challenge organisers and support will happen through a dedicated community forum. Teams will be invited to the community forum upon registration to SDC3.
During the competition, the name of the teams and the names of the members of each team will be visible to the other challenge teams and participants through the forum platform.
For IT support related to the computational resources, see the relevant section on the page of each facility. This support should essentially be used for access and initial setup. Teams are expected to be self-sufficient in deploying their pipelines.