Submission Guideline

Register & Login

Register 

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Fill out a proposal

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

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:

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.

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):

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

Budget

Please note the following guidelines for the budget:

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

Personnel costs

Non-personnel costs

Budget per region

Cost overview

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

Explanation of cost planning

Disclosure of other applications for funding

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”).

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”.