ESS26 - Resilience and Crises / Selection and decision process

Applications must be submitted via the online Funding Portal in the specified timeframes. Submissions after the deadline will not be considered.

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

Depending on the call (size, scope etc) the jury is comprised of 6-12 outstanding experts. As this call takes place within the instrument of "Ergänzende Instrumente" according to WWTF funding guidelines, some members of the jury will have an Austrian affiliation. 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.   

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:

All required signatures from the appropriate persons are uploaded. All projects will be checked for plagiarism with software. Submission of the same or highly similar research ideas to other funding organizations, which must be explicitly declared in the 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.

Evaluation of the proposals

Each proposal is independently assessed by at least two jury members based on the evaluation criteria.

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 result is a recommendation for each project: “to be funded” or “not to be funded”.

Formal funding decision

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

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.