The QuantERA Call Secretariat has prepared answers to some Frequently Asked Questions, in order to provide help to all prospective Call 2021 applicants.
Please note that this section and the related FAQ document will be updated regularly. If your question is not answered here, please contact the QuantERA Call Secretariat. For questions about national/regional eligibility issues, please contact the national contact persons listed in the Call Announcement.
They can participate in a project as long as they are able to secure their funding with other funding sources or by own funds. The partners not requesting funding to QuantERA do not count for the minimum number of partners/countries in the consortium. Moreover, the consortium coordinator must be supported by a funding organisation participating in the call.
The Widening Countries participating in the call are: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Turkey.
QuantERA supports the involvement of these countries by giving priority to consortia with partners from these countries, in situations where several proposals are ranked with the same score, and the budget is not sufficient for all. The call Partner Search Tool allows searching potential partners by country.
The countries participating in the call for proposals are: Austria,Belgium,Bulgaria,Croatia,CzechRepublic,Denmark,Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.
The countries are represented by one or two funding organisations. The eligibility of a potential consortium partner depends on the funding rules of the respective funding organisation this partner is applying to.
In general – yes, however its feasibility depends on the national/regional funding regulations. Pages 11-14 of the Call Announcement list all the funding organisations allowing such partners to be funded.
QuantERA encourages excellent young researchers to take responsibilities. This will not be considered a priori by the evaluation panel as a weakness. Generally, PhD costs are eligible as well as post-doctoral costs. However, since the funding follows national/regional rules, the consortium partners need to check the specific eligible costs with their respective funding organisations.
It depends on the national/regional funding organisation. You need to contact your national/regional funding organisation contact point to confirm.
The funding recommendation follows a joint decision of the QuantERA Call Steering Committee (composed of the QuantERA funding organisations in the call). There are no national/regional parallel decision processes. Moreover, the funding organisations have to follow the ranking list established by the evaluation panel.
The funding recommendation can go up to rank N if and only the budget available at each of the funding organisations involved in the project is sufficient, and if all the projects from ranks 1 to N-1 can be funded.
Each topic evaluation panel is composed of international high-level experts. The evaluation panel members are appointed by QuantERA funding organisations. They are working in the EU or overseas.
A proposal can focus on a single target outcome or cover several of them.
The same font and style should be used for the whole proposal (recommended: Arial, 11pt, single-spaced).
Detailed instructions are provided in the QuantERA Pre-Proposal Template document.
At the QuantERA level, A PI may not coordinate more than one proposal. However, there are no restrictions concerning multiple participation of that PI in other proposals. Note that by participating in several proposals, a PI is responsible for correctly specifying his/her participation time in each proposal (in terms of person-month), such that the sum of his/her participations does not exceed his/her available work time.
Nevertheless, in such case she/he needs to check her/his eligibility with the respective funding organisation, which may have specific rules, by contacting their contact point (p. 10 of the Call Announcement available here).
The joint evaluation principle is central. The proposals are evaluated and ranked by the QuantERA evaluation panel members. The selection is based on this ranking.
Parallel national/regional scientific evaluations may occur for instance to assess the type of research targeted by the project and its adequacy with the funding organisation rules. This information is available in the Call Announcement national/regional annexes.