ICT25 / Details of chapters

Basic Information

This chapter contains basic information about the full proposal, including title, scientific disciplines involved, keywords, duration, and type of project (i.e., regular WWTF Project or Joint Project). Fill out fields as required.

Please note:

• The project title, acronym, nominated scientific disciplines and type of project (regular WWTF Project or Joint Project) can no longer be changed.
• Please note that you cannot change the duration of the project.
  • In case that it is absolutely necessary to change the duration, please contact the programme manager. Please also note that the duration of the project can still be changed when concluding the contract. WWTF also allows for the cost neutral prolongation of the project once it is running for up to one year without any justification. 
• Keywords: Keywords may still be edited or added. These will help the WWTF identify appropriate reviewers for your proposal.
• Suggested peer reviewers: Applicants must suggest five international peers whom they deem qualified to review the proposal. To enable the selection of a balanced set of reviewers, please provide keywords or phrases to describe the reviewers’ fields of expertise. Suggested reviewers must be based outside of Austria and have no conflict of interests with project applicants (complete team and collaborators). Persons with whom the project applicants have worked together (joint publications, research cooperations, etc.) in the last five years will not be considered. Please note that the WWTF will decide if suggested peers will be contacted for reviewing, and WWTF may take different reviewers to those you suggested. As a rule, WWTF will include a maximum of two reviewers suggested by the applicants. The other reviewers are suggested by the jury and/or WWTF office to avoid bias.
• Excluded peer reviewers: Applicants may, without stating any reasons, exclude up to three individuals from reviewing their proposal. 

In order to suggest eligible and unique reviewers, the jury will be informed about the reviewers suggested and excluded by the applicants. The reviewers nominated by the applicants will be not be disclosed to the reviewers themselves. Each proposal is generally reviewed by four (and no less than three) reviewers.

Personnel and Institutions

Please note that the addition, removal, or substitution of core team members (PI&C, co-PIs) are not permitted at this stage. WWTF may make exceptions in well-argued circumstances (e.g., a co-PI moving to an institution abroad or leaving the academic field). Please contact WWTF in such a case. WWTF reserves the right to exclude projects from further evaluation in cases in which PIs can no longer be part of the project team. 

Further partner institutions: Collaborating institutions beyond those of the core team members can be added in this stage. Please note that every person involved in the project must be linked to an institution in order to allow indication of time commitment and salary in the “Budget” section. A signature will be required from the authorizing persons at the core team members’ institutions and at all further partner institutions. A maximum of five different institutions (including those of the core team members) is permitted. Should a project be funded, the addition of further collaborations will be possible.

Project

This chapter contains the scientific work programme. Fill out the following fields:

Please note that the character limit includes spaces

Lay summary (1,000 characters)

Please provide a description of your proposed research that is suitable for the general public. This will primarily be used by WWTF for communicating your work to non-experts for fundraising and public relations purposes. 

Scientific abstract (2,000 characters) 

Please provide a concise scientific abstract of the project. This will be used in approaching reviewers. 

Work programme: Please use the template provided for download in the WWTF Funding Portal. The headings in bold are mandatory (details and guiding questions can be found in the template). Upload the completed document as PDF (max. 15 pages including figures)

1. Introduction and background

• • • Subject of the research

    • State of the art and key scientific challenges (including own scientific work / past and currently running projects relevant to the proposed project)

2. Hypotheses and objectives 

• • • Research questions and hypotheses
    • Objectives of the project

3. Innovativeness and expected results

• • • Novelty of the proposed research
    • Expected results and relevance to field of ICT

4. Methodological approach 

• • • Research methods
    • Research plan (including Gantt chart)
    • Feasibility and risk mitigation
      

5. Mid- to long-term academic and societal impacts

6. Project team 

• • • Roles and expertise of personnel

    • Collaborative elements of project, including interdisciplinary aspects

    • Project management and supervision

7. Key references 

Please note that potential sex/gender aspects of the research topic and gender balance in the research team should be considered throughout the application (see this section). These should be briefly described where appropriate in the relevant sections.

Ethical considerations (500 characters)

Indicate if ethical approval of an ethics committee or institutional review board is required for the project. If so, please describe the potential ethical aspects and upload the ethical approval(s) as a single PDF. There is no page limit for the approvals, but the document may not exceed 10 MB. If no ethical aspects are identified, please also provide a brief statement.

Data Management (500 characters) 

In case of funding, a detailed data management plan must be submitted at the start of the project. At the full proposal stage, we encourage applicants to consider and briefly address the following points as appropriate:

• What kind of accompanying metadata and documentation will help others identify, discover, reuse, and/or reproduce the research data?
• How will data for sharing and preservation be selected?
• When will data be shared?
• In which repositories will data be archived? How long will data be retained?
• What persistent identifiers (e.g., DOI) and usage licenses (e.g., CC BY) will be used?

Use of generative AI (800 characters)

Please describe if and how GenAI has been used in developing your research proposal. Please see further details here.

Budget

Please note the following guidelines for the budget:

• Maximum 15% difference between the budgets of the short and full proposals is permitted.
• For personnel costs, an annual 3.5% p.a. increase in salary over the lifetime of the project has been pre-programmed. This is intended to assist with planning only, and actual salaries should be paid according to institutional or collective agreements. Please use baseline salaries according to the date you expect to start the project. (The project should start the latest January 2026.) Please contact your institutional research support services in this matter.
• Non-personnel costs should not exceed 25% of the total requested budget.

Personnel costs

• Core team members of the short proposal are automatically listed in the respective table.
• Click “Additional person” to individually add all persons who will work on the project. Please provide their name or select “is N.N.” if the role is to be filled (e.g., PhD candidate, Post Doc). Indicate the affiliation and staff category of each person using the dropdown menu. If an affiliation is not listed, return to the section “Personnel and Institutions” and add the respective institution. Each person must be assigned to an institution.
• Specify if the person will be financed by WWTF or contribute on an in-kind basis, and indicate their yearly time commitment to the project for each year (full time equivalents). A mixture of WWTF and in-kind financing is permitted.
• For persons financed by WWTF, enter the annual salary that corresponds to 100% employment in the first year of the project (keep that in mind in particular for PhD candidates whose position is often cal-culated on a 0.75 basis). The total funding requested for each person will be automatically calculated.

Non-personnel costs

• Add rows to provide a concise overview of all non-personnel costs directly related to the project. Please select the institution and cost category from the dropdown menus. If an affiliation is not listed, return to the section “Personnel and Institutions” and add the respective institution.
• Costs for basic infrastructure (rent, telephone) are not permitted. Costs for larger equipment essential for the project may only be requested on a pro rata basis that also takes into consideration the propor-tion of time that the equipment will be used for this project.
• WWTF strongly encourages open access publications. Costs for Article Processing Charges (APCs) may be requested.
• Costs for data management purposes (e.g., curation, storage) are eligible.

Budget per region

• The share of the budget allocated to the regions “Vienna” and “Other” will automatically be shown for WWTF projects, and to the regions “Vienna”, “Lower Austria” and “Other” for Joint Projects.
• For regular WWTF projects, at least 80% of the requested funding must be allocated to the region “Vienna”. Up to 20% may be allocated to other partner(s), including partners in Lower Austria.
• For Joint Projects, the budget allocated to the region “Vienna” must be at least 51%. The share of the budget allocated to the region “Lower Austria” may range from 21% to 49%. Up to 20% may be allo-cated to any further partner(s) located in other regions (“Other”).

Cost overview

• Enter the overhead rate for each institution. WWTF permits a maximum of 20% overheads costs. Please consult each institutions’ research services to ensure compliance with all institutions’ internal regulations.

Explanation of Cost Planning (2500 characters) 

• Please provide an explanation of cost planning principles, also indicating access to resources that are already available.

Disclosure of other applications for funding (750 characters) 

• If you have applied for funding for this project (or parts thereof) at other organisations, please indicate this here. This will not impact the evaluation of this proposal.
• The WWTF policy on simultaneous submissions to other funding organisations does not allow double funding. If both of your proposals are funded, we will ask you to decide which funding you will accept.
• Double funding will be reviewed by the FWF. This means that the FWF will receive the list of projects and check whether a similar project has already been submitted to the FWF.