Submission Guideline

• Register & Login
• Create a new proposal
• Invite PIs & enter information about PIs
• Curriculum Vitae and List of Publications
• Fill out a proposal
• Chapters to fill out
• Signatures
• Submit the proposal

Register & Login

Register 

• Go to https://fundingportal.wwtf.at/
• Go to “Register” in the top menu
• Enter your registration data (*indicates mandatory fields)
• Please note that the person who initially registers must not necessarily be the PI&C of the project. The PI&C and co-PIs can be invited to the proposal at a later time. This allows research support and admin personnel to first check the requirements for submitting a proposal.
• You will receive an email to confirm registration.

If you are a PI, please complete your profile as early as possible because your profile information is used in the other parts of the proposals (e.g., your institution).

Login

• Go to https://fundingportal.wwtf.at/
• Login with your credentials

Create a new proposal

1. Go to “Calls” in the top menu
2. Select the ME/CFS Call 2024 "Understanding ME/CFS" Call
3. Click “Participate now” à a new proposal will be created. You can create multiple proposals. However, please note that each researcher may participate as PI&C or co-PI in a maximum of two proposals.
4. Once created, you will find all your proposals under “My Proposals & Roles” in the top menu. You can delete proposals at any time. Proposals that are not submitted will be deleted automatically after the submission deadline.

The Funding Portal will save your entries and changes automatically. You can pause data entry at any time. All information will be available again upon your next login.

Invite PIs & enter information about PIs

WWTF requires information only about the researchers in the core team of the project, i.e., the PI&C and up to two co-PIs. Further researchers beyond the core team may also take part in the project, either funded by WWTF or with in-kind contribution in the budget section.

To provide the information required in the proposal, the PI&C and potential co-PIs will need to be invited to the proposal.

Step 1: Invite the PI&C and co-PIs

1. Go to the tab “Personnel and Institutions”
2. Invite a “Principal Investigator and Coordinator” by providing their contact information.

• • In case you are the PI&C, please click “I am the Principal Investigator”. You can then invite further co-PIs to this proposal.
  • In case you are not the PI&C, you will need to be invited to the proposal. The invited PI will receive an email to accept the invitation. The invited person can login with an existing account or register as a new user. You and the PI&C can then invite further co-PIs to the proposal.

Step 2: Complete your “Profile”

The PI&C and all co-PIs must complete “My Profile”. If you are creating a project on behalf of others and are not part of the Core Team, you do not need to provide this information.

1. Upon login, go to “My Profile” in the top menu to fill out or update your profile. This information needs to be entered only once and can then be used for multiple proposals or in future calls.

• • Please upload or update your CV based on the template provided. See Section 6.1. for details.
  • Should you have multiple affiliations, these can be added in your profile. Different affiliations may then be used for different proposals.

Step 3: Complete your “Role”

1. Go to “My Proposal & Roles” in the top menu. Under “My Roles”, click on your role below the title of the proposal.

• • You can update the personal information by clicking on “Refresh from profile”. The system will check if there is new information in “My Profile” and update this section accordingly. 

  • Enter data in the respective fields:

    • Scientific expertise

    • Role and responsibilities within the project

    • Specific competencies for the project

Please note that the information entered here should be specific to the project. If you are participating in multiple proposals that requires different subsets of your expertise, please tailor the information according to the project.

• • Select the affiliation with which you want to apply for the proposal. Please note that an authorization signature will be required from this institute for the proposal.

  • Check the box under “Affirmation” to confirm acknowledgement of and compliance with guidelines from WWTF and additional relevant organisations.

As the Funding Portal automatically relays entered information about the PI&C and co-PIs into subsequent parts of the proposal, we recommend that the core team members fill out these sections early (e.g., institutions of the core team members are automatically added to the budget).

Curriculum Vitae and List of Publications

Please use the CV template provided. This is the correct template:"All other calls: wwtf_cvtemplate_project.docx"

Do not exceed 2 pages for the CV, as the system will not accept the upload of documents longer than 2 pages

• List all items in reverse chronological order.
• For each of the selected publications (max. 10), provide 1-2 sentences outlining the relevance of the publication for the proposal.
• If possible, please also provide a link to a more detailed list of your publications. This may be your institutional website, personal website, an ORCID profile, Google Scholar profile, etc.
• Describe additional qualifications or skills that are relevant for the success of the project. These may extend beyond scientific skills to experience in leadership, supervision, Open Science, etc.

Fill out a proposal

The proposal is comprised of five chapters (each under a tab):

• Basic Information
• Personnel and Institutions
• Project
  
• Budget
• Signatures

A chapter with a red alert symbol indicates that it is incomplete. Within the marked chapter, click on the red symbol(s) beside individual sections to highlight the fields requiring attention.  A green checkmark symbol indicates that the information in the chapter is complete.

Please note that the symbols might not refresh immediately even if the information in the chapter is complete. Changing to another chapter and going back to the other will refresh the symbol. 

Chapters to fill out

Basic Information

This chapter contains basic information about the 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:

• Scientific Disciplines: Fields will be suggested as you type. WWTF uses the ÖFOS classification system of Statistik Austria.
• Joint Project: Please indicate if this proposal is a Joint Project, i.e. includes partners from Lower Austria with a higher share possible from the overall project budget. For details regarding team composition and budget distribution, please refer to the “Call Specifications” document for this call.

Personnel and Institutions

This chapter contains information about the main parties in the project. Ideally, information about the PI&C and co-PIs have already been entered (see Section 5). However, this information can be changed at any time.

• Co-PIs can be added to the project. Please note the maximum of three PIs in the core team.
• Additional partner institutions beyond those of the core team members can be added under “Further Partner Institutions”. (The institutions of the PI&C and co-PIs are automatically added by the system.) Entering an additional institution provides the option of allocating budget to this institution in the “Budget” chapter. This may be important in case of collaboration with researchers at institutes other than those of the core team members
• A maximum of five different institutions may be involved in the proposal. This includes the institutions of the PI&C and co-PI(s).

Project

This chapter contains the part of the scientific work programme. Fill out the following fields (please note that the character limit includes spaces):

Lay summary: 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. (1,000 characters)

Scientific abstract: Please provide a concise scientific abstract of the project. This will be used in approaching reviewers. (2,000 characters)

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. 8 pages including figures)

1. Introduction and State-of-the-art
   
2. Innovativeness and original contribution
3. Research questions, objectives and/or hypotheses
4. Methodological approaches and workplan
5. Expected outcomes and potential next research steps
6. Project team and interdisciplinary collaboration
7. 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 “Call Specifications” document). These should be briefly described where appropriate in the relevant sections. Further details will be required in the full proposal phase.

Ethical considerations: 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 provide a brief statement. Describe the process and the involvement and awareness of the core team and staff. (500 characters).

An acknowledgement of receipt from the ethics committee/institutional review board must be submitted with the proposal. The final approval (“Votum”) must be submitted to WWTF the latest before project start.

Data Management: We encourage applicants to consider and briefly address the following points as appropriate (500 characters):

• 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?

In case of funding, further details will be discussed during contracting. 

Budget

Please note the following guidelines for the budget:

• For personnel costs, an annual 6% 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 for your date you expect to start the project. The project should start the latest January 2025. Please contact your institutional Research Support in this matter.
• Non-personnel costs should not exceed 40% of the total requested budget.

Due to the budget size per project, WWTF does not pay overheads in this call

Personnel costs

• 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” (see Section 6.2) 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 calculated 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” (see Section 6.2) 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 proportion 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 70% of the requested funding must be allocated to the region “Vienna”. Up to 30% 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 30% to 49%. Up to 30% may be allocated to any further partner(s) located in other regions (“Other”).

Cost overview

This is where you see all budget allocated to each institution, divided into personnel and non-personnel costs.

Explanation of cost planning

• Please provide an explanation of cost planning principles, also indicating access to resources that are already available. 1000 characters).

Disclosure of other applications for funding

• 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.
• WWTF allows the simultaneous submission of proposals at other funding organisation. However, WWTF does not permit double funding. In case a project is approved for funding at both organisations, we will ask you to choose the organisation from which you want to accept funding for the project.
• WWTF will perform a check with FWF regarding double funding. This means, FWF will receive the list of projects and check if a similar project has been submitted to FWF.

Signatures

Submission of the proposal requires the signatures of the authorized person(s) at the host institutions of each of the PI&C and co-PIs (“Authorization”).

• Please consult your institutional research services regarding the person mandated to sign the proposals and plan sufficient time to obtain their signatured
• Enter the name of each authorized person in the online form. This information will be included in the PDF to be signed.
• Download the PDF using the link “You can generate the signature sheet here”.
• Signatures may be provided in various formats
  • Add a scanned or physical signature, and upload the form; or
  • Insert an electronic signature (e.g., A-Trust, Handysignatur) and upload the form. Please note that electronically signed PDFs cannot be merged into a single document.

Unlike proposals in the previous Submission System, signatures from the core team are no longer required in the new Funding Portal.

Submit the proposal

Once all symbols in all chapters are marked by green checkmarks, the proposal can be submitted. The “Submit” button is at the bottom of the “Signatures” chapter. The PI&C will receive an automatic confirmation email when the Funding Portal receives the completed submission.

No changes are possible after the project has been submitted. After the indicated deadline, submission is no longer possible. Unsubmitted proposals will be excluded from the ensuing evaluation process and deleted shortly after the submission deadline.

You can access your submitted proposal as PDF on the page “My Proposals and Roles”.