Dear colleagues,
Thank you very much to Livia for the helpful information on requirements for a
COST proposal. Unfortunately, December 7 is too soon in order to develop a
meaningful proposal and a work schedule for the whole network. Thus, we should
go for the deadline in 2017, even if it would be October.
Many of you have sent to Katharina a short description of your research
interests. In the next weeks we will take a look at them and will try to
identify some key contents the network may work on. We will also try to develop
a rough work schedule for each key content. Afterwards we can discuss these
outputs via the network or at the workshop in Hannover in February. In March
and April more concert steps towards a proposal can be taken.
With best wishes
Christoph
Am 21.10.2016 um 14:56 schrieb Livia Ortensi <livia.ortensi1@xxxxxxxxx>:
Dear colleagues ,
Im just back from the very interesting meeting on COST actions that my
University hosted today.
I want to share most important information with you in order to help the
writing of OUR cost. If someone has some experience in applying for COST
maybe will find these information not new.
The first (bad) news is that the time is very strict: the deadline is set for
7 December 2016, 12:00 noon (CET). The following collection date will be in
October 2017. Its a competitive grant (but all are). Last call had 25
founded proposals over more than 500 applications.
The good news is that the application is not very long (15 pages) and that
large networks are welcomed. The grant allows multiple applications so in
the unlucky case our proposal is rejected we can apply for the next call.
The cost officer was very clear in underling that the application should be
anonymous. Is forbidden to mention participations to previous projects or
working group (we can just mention them). The use of reference section should
also be as neutral as possible (we can cite our works but in a way the
evaluator understands who we are: i.e. not a list with the same few authors).
10% of the projects are rejected because the author(s) were easily
identifiable.
She also recommended
- attention in identifying keywords
- balance of senior and junior researchers
- an attention to innovation
- an attention to what is different in our aim compared to the current state
of art
- attention to gender balance
- the minimum number of countries is 5 (will be 7 from the next call)
- inclusion of the so called ITC countries (Bulgaria Croatia Cyprus Czech
Republic Estonia Hungary Latvia Lithuania Malta Poland Romania Slovakia
Slovenia fYR Macedonia Montenegro Republic of Serbia Turkey Bosnia and
Herzegovina Luxembourg Portugal) not compulsory but we have to indicate how
to enlarge the network to these countries if we do not have them already. Do
we have someone from these countries among those who volonteered? This could
be a plus.
Finally no problems in having scholars from non EU28 countries :-))
The grant is about 5.000 euro per country per year more or less.
Time is a hard master for the first deadline, the second will be probably be
later than the expected April 2017 (the cost officer say it will be probably
later than April as there will be some changes)
We have to decide what to do.
Best Wishes from Milan
Livia
