Selection and decision process

Applications must be submitted via the online Funding Portal in the specified timeframes. Submissions after the deadline or those arriving at WWTF in other ways will not be considered.

Basic Process

Formal eligibility check by WWTF

WWTF office will conduct a formal eligibility check of the proposal based on the criteria outlined in the WWTF Funding Guideline, and this document. This includes:

• The number of allowed submissions per institutions has not been exceeded. 
• All required signatures (institutional authorization) are complete and valid.
• All applications comply with good scientific practice (plagiarism check with software).
• Submission of the same or highly similar research ideas to other funding organizations, which must be explicitly declared in the full proposal. Application for funding at other organizations is permitted and will not impact the evaluation. In case of funding, applicants will be asked by which organization they wish to be funded, as double funding is not permitted by WWTF.

Substantial deficiencies and missing sections in the application will lead to the exclusion of the application from further evaluation and rejection on formal grounds. The strict timeline of the call does not allow for proposals to be sent back to the applicants for amendments.

Selection by the Call Jury

The core element of WWTF’s decision-making processes is anthe internationalcall jury mandated to make a funding recommendation to the WWTF boards. 

• Depending on the call (size, scope etc) the jury is comprised of 6-1210 outstandingnational and international expertsexperts. whoPlease havenote no current affiliationdue to anthe Austriannature institution.of the call (Supplementary Measure; data infrastructure contexts), national experts will be part of the jury. 
• Jury members are selected by WWTF according to their expertise in the call topic. They have no known conflict of interest prior to the submission deadline. For details, see section on evaluation below.
• The names of jury members will be published on the WWTF website after the WWTF Board of Directors finalize the formal funding decision.   

Evaluation of short proposals

Each proposal is independently assessed by at least two jury members based on the evaluation criteria. The jury decides in a meeting (on-site or online) if a short proposal should be invited to the full proposal stage. This usually takes place 1-2 months after the short proposal submission deadline.  All applicantsdecision will be promptly informed about the decision. Unsuccessful applicants will be provided with a short jury statement explaining the decision. Successful applicants will be informed that they are invited to submit a full-length proposal.

Evaluation of full proposals

All duly submitted full proposals are checked again for formal aspects. Proposals which do not meet the formal requirements will be rejected at this stage. The information provided in the full proposal must be consistent with the short proposal and extend it by providing more information and details. Major deviations to the short proposal must be justified explicitly. If major deviations cannot be satisfactorily explained, it may be rejectedtaken by the jury atonly. thisNo stage. 

Eligible full proposals will undergo a review process. 

WWTF will obtain a minimum of two (usually 3-4) writtenexternal reviews for each proposal. Reviewers are international experts in the topic(s) of the proposals. WWTF does not contact reviewers based in Austria. WWTF aims for diversity in the cohort of reviewers for a call (gender, age, countries). All reviewers will be checkedsought. by

Basis for the WWTFdecision officemaking for potential conflicts of interests withis the applicants. As a rule, reviewers should not have close professional relations to any of the applicants in the project team. Practically, this excludes reviewers that have published with the applicants within the last five years or have had a collaboration in a research project in this timeframe. In case of very close cooperation with the applicant(s) over a longer period of time, the reviewer will also be excluded. Joint publications in an edited volumes/proceeding, “community papers” with more than 30 authors or common attendances in workshops and conferences do not qualify as conflict of interest. Additionally, reviewers are asked to disclose any potential conflict of interest.

Reviewers will be asked to provide theirindividual assessment of the proposalproposals through a standardised online questionnaire. The expert reviewers remain anonymous to the applicants. Jury members nominate reviewers. In addition, in the full proposal submissions, applicants are asked to suggest 5 experts whom they deem qualified to review the proposal. WWTF office will check the reviewers for potential conflict of interests. WWTF office is free to choose/not to choose anyahead of the suggested experts. Applicants may also exclude up to 3 persons without stating any reasons. Reviewers on the negative list will not be contacted. 

Applicants will have the opportunity to respond in writing to the external reviews.

The purpose of the applicant response step is to allow correction of any factual errors or conceptual misunderstandings in the external reviews. The length of the applicant response will be limited to the equivalent of one A4 page of text. The response must be entered as text in the Funding Portal. Pictures, graphs, or other documents cannot be inserted or attached. Applicants will be given 7 calendar days to view and respond to the peer reviews. While the exact dates for the applicant response step are not fixed, an indicative time period is provided. All core team members will receive an email notification when the applicant response step is open in the Funding Portal. Submission of a response to reviews is not compulsory. However, the jury panel will be informed that all teams were provided with the opportunity to respond to reviews. More details about the scope and process of the applicant response phase will be available to core teams invited to submit a full proposal.

Full Proposal Jury meeting

The jury will convene about 3-4 months after the submission deadline of the full proposals to select full proposals to recommend for funding. The jury may be extended by additional members in case supplementary expertise is needed to cover the topics of the proposals. At least two jury members are assigned to each proposal and act as rapporteurs for the proposals.

The basis for the evaluation by the jury aremembers and a two day selection meeting. The jury provides a list of projects they recommend to the fullWWTF proposals, the external reviews, and the applicant’s response to reviews. The arguments brought forward in the review reports will be carefully balanced with the jury’s own expertise. The result is a recommendationBoards for eachfunding. project: “to

The bejury funded”may orrecommend “notbudget tocuts beas funded”.

well as

additional conditions.

Formal funding decision by WWTF Boards

The jury recommendation will be formally confirmed first by the WWTF Advisory Board and then approved by the WWTF Board of Directors.

Notification of Applications

• Applicants will be promptly informed about the decision. 
• The decision may include budget cuts as well as additional conditions and recommendations.
• Unsuccessful applicants will receive a short statement by the jury explaining the main reasons why the project was not selected for funding.

Please note that WWTF does not allow the opportunity for rebuttals to either recommendations by the jury panel or decisions by the WWTF Board of Directors.