Applicant Guidelines

 

What is on offer?

EOSC-Life brings together 13 Life Science research infrastructures (LS RIs) to create an open collaborative space for digital biology. The aim of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is to enable ground-breaking research, and to generate new knowledge by linking the life science community to a variety of interdisciplinary data resources and a platform of data analysis tools. Publishing or re-using FAIR data resources and running workflows in the cloud is becoming increasingly important for researchers. EOSC-Life is offering training, advice and assistance from data experts, tool developers and cloud specialists, alongside financial support for projects, to enable life science researchers to connect their research to the cloud.

 

The Digital Life Science Open Call will provide both funding for the project team and technical expertise and training from the EOSC-Life consortium to enable the delivery of complex cloud-connected life science research projects. Funding allocated to the project team should contribute to the salary costs of experts working on the project. Projects should budget for approximately one full time post equivalent for the duration of the project. We expect to provide in the range of 70000 to 85000€/project.

 

Areas covered by EOSC-Life experts:

• Data curation, handling and integration for publishing into the cloud (AKA WP1)
• Tool interoperability, workflows and containerisation (AKA WP2)
• Cloud deployment and resources (AKA WP7)

Applicants must use the “Contact Experts” button to be assigned EOSC-Life experts for each applicable area relevant to their project, in order to discuss project feasibility. This contact should be made as early as possible before submitting their proposal to allow sufficient time for consultations with the experts.

 

What projects are eligible?

Applications are invited from scientists working on research projects within a life science domain which will contribute to and/or take advantage of cloud-based data and analysis. The point of this Open Call is to make data and/or workflows available to the EOSC and the scientific community. Data and workflows should be available at the point of application and should not have to be generated from scratch. Projects will be considered if they make resources (data, workflows...) available within the EOSC that have a wide and demonstrable impact and use beyond a single project. Projects should not aim to improve/modify already available datasets and workflows (e.g: curation of pre-existing dataset, modification of existing workflows).

 

Who is eligible?

Applicants can be affiliated with either academic institutions, research organisations, or industry.

Applicants must be associated with an institution eligible to receive EU funding. For information about how funds will be transferred to successful project teams please see the addendum.

 

EOSC-Life is committed to assisting with research efforts targeting SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19.  Within the Digital Life Sciences Open Call scientific projects on SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 will be prioritized compared to other projects, if their relevance is striking and if there is an urgent need to start. We offer a fast-tracked review of your proposal if this applies to your project. Contact opencall@eosc-life.eu after you have submitted your proposal to request COVID-19 fast-tracked review.

 

Maturation phase

Before submitting a proposal, you must contact the experts for each of the areas of support you are requesting, or, if you are not requesting technical support from EOSC-Life and providing the expertise in-house, for each of the areas your project is aligned with, to discuss your proposed project. You can get in touch with these experts via the “Contact Experts” buttons in the first step of the application. An expert will then be assigned to your proposal under development to discuss your requirements and align these with their available resources, bring in technical perspectives, and provide feedback on the proposal to help you to refine your application.

After the consultation with the EOSC-Life experts you and your team should submit your proposal in ARIA before the final call deadline. We advise you to make contact with the experts at the earliest opportunity and no later than 14 days before the submission deadline to ensure that there is sufficient time for consultation and to refine your proposal.

 

Assessment criteria

Proposal assessment will be split into two stages:

1. Technical feasibility and maturity assessment performed by technical experts within the EOSC-Life consortium
2. Scientific excellence and impact assessment performed by external scientific experts

To be accepted as an EOSC-Life Digital Life Science Open Call funded project, the proposal must pass both stages.

Experts will be looking for projects which demonstrate:

• Scientific excellence and impact
• Potential to make available new valuable resources (data/services/methods) within the EOSC and for the scientific communities represented by the Life Science Research Infrastructures.
• Feasibility of the project within the EOSC-Life runtime (the project must be completed and reported before February 2023 and start within 2 months after project acceptance).
• Availability of resources within the project team: people power, computational & financial resources.
• Availability of resources within the EOSC-Life technical expert teams: if EOSC-Life expert support is required in your project, please contact the relevant experts before submitting your project application to ensure that the requested assistance is available.
• Sustainability after the end of EOSC-Life. Projects should have a clear plan for their sustainability beyond the duration of the funding period (e.g.: data/software/project output management plan).

 

Projects should be expected to run for approximately 12 months and start within 2 months after project acceptance. Independent of this, all project work and reporting must be completed before February 2023 to receive funding. Projects should strive for close cooperation with life science research infrastructures (RIs) (https://www.eosc-life.eu/about/about-european-ris/) and the topic must be of relevance for life science RIs. Applications involving several life science domains are preferred as they help to improve interoperability across scientific disciplines.

In the spirit of Open Science and FAIR data, successful projects are expected to have a lasting impact and provide sustainable outcomes to enable future projects to benefit from their work and re-use their data, tools and workflows. Projects should present novelty in terms of the interplay between RIs and the EOSC and address important challenges and needs of the biological and biomedical community.

For more information on our assessment processes please see the reviewer guidelines and the technical evaluation guidelines.

 

Deadline for submissions

The deadline for submissions will be 5pm CET Tuesday 22 December 2020. Only submissions received in full before this deadline will be considered for acceptance.

Applicants must have made contact with technical experts in the areas relevant to their application before submission. See “Maturation phase” for more information.

 

Terms and conditions

By applying to this call you must agree to be bound by the Digital Life Science Open Call Terms of submission and agree that your personal data can be processed according to the Digital Life Science Open Call privacy policy.

 

FAQ

If you have questions regarding the Open Call and the application process, check our FAQ.

If you don’t find the answers you are looking for, contact opencall@eosc-life.eu to submit your query and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

 

 

Return to the proposal submission page