About OSCARS Open Calls

Dissemination of project results

The applicants must commit to provide, for public dissemination, at the OSCARS final (or dedicated) event in Brussels the following deliverables:

1. A final project summary in PDF format of maximum 5000 characters, including spaces
2. A presentation
3. A “scientific journal or journal-type” article summarising the main project results and methodology used to achieve them.

Evaluation criteria

The Independent Evaluation Committee – IEC will firstly evaluate proposed scientific projects and service developments on the basis of their breakthrough character, scopes and FAIRNESS, or “openness”, as well as of their relevance to other ESFRI’s, and/or other Research Infrastructures.

Other criteria for the evaluation are the scientific impacts, and the digital resources required for their implementation. Finally, the IEC will assess the concreteness of the projects’ implementation steps and of the expected results, the coherency and adequacy of the requested funds based on the budget breakdown, and the overall compliance of the projects with the EOSC and FAIR principles.

Below the key evaluation questions per proposal section are listed:

Proposal section: Project description

Subcriteria:

1. Are the Open Science aims and objectives of the proposed scientific project or service adequately and clearly explained?
2. Are the scientific objectives and expected impacts of the proposal adequately and clearly defined?
3. Is the proposed project’s engagement with a community or the contribution to Open Data Research adequately and clearly explained?
4. Is the contribution to or the leverage of the Science Cluster work programme clearly explained?
5. Is the relevance to ESFRI and other RIs of the proposed scientific project or service adequately addressed?

Proposal section: Scientific impacts

Subcriteria:

1. Is the scientific project and/or the service development proposed clearly going beyond the state of the art?
2. Is the potential large scientific impact adequately explained?
3. Is the expected impact of the proposed project on an ESFRI RI or on multiple RIs, or is its capacity to engage through the Science Clusters with multiple RIs clearly illustrated?

Proposal section: Digital resources

Subcriteria:

1. Is the proposed project adequately referencing the Science Clusters’ platforms?
2. Are the digital resources required and/or the connection to EOSC services envisaged clearly identified?

Proposal section: Project Implementation and Final Deliverables

Subcriteria:

1. Are the project implementation steps concrete and well explained?
2. Are the anticipated results achievable with the implementation steps put in place and in the suggested timeframe?
3. Does the budget breakdown correspond to the presented implementation steps and is it reasonable?
4. Does the proposal adequately commit to EOSC compliance and openness of its results?

Funding rules

EC funding rules apply (see also the EC's Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement).

Contact Information

For enquiries about the Open Call, please contact:

• envri [at] oscars-project [dot] eu – For scientific questions on proposals related to ENVRI Science Cluster (Environmental Sciences)
• escape [at] oscars-project [dot] eu – For scientific questions on proposals related to the ESCAPE Science Cluster (Astronomy, Nuclear & Particle Physics)
• lsri [at] oscars-project [dot] eu – For scientific questions on proposals related to the LS RI Science Cluster (Life Sciences)
• panosc [at] oscars-project [dot] eu – For scientific questions on proposals related to the PaNOSC Science Cluster (Photon and Neutron Science)
• sshoc [at] oscars-project [dot] eu – For scientific questions on proposals related to the SSHOC Science Cluster (Social Science and Humanities)
• opencall [at] oscars-project [dot] eu – For general questions about funding rules, reporting requirements and similar and on proposals related to scientific disciplines not included in those covered by the Science Clusters
• grantsplatform [at] oscars-project [dot] eu - For enquiries about the Grants’ Platform

For questions on proposals related to more than one Science Cluster, please include the related email addresses of all the involved Science Clusters.

Successful projects from the 1st OSCARS Open Call

Short descriptions of the successful projects from the 1st Open Call are provided here.

Science Clusters' Services

Browse here the services of the Science Clusters

FAQs - Frequently Asked Questions

Background

Q:Can you explain the Science Clusters in detail?

A: The science clusters have grown out of five collaborative projects funded by the European Union in 2019 to link ESFRI and other world-class Research Infrastructures (RIs) to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The services developed by the clusters and other outcomes of the projects are cornerstones of the emerging EOSC fabric and support both disciplinary communities and multidisciplinary initiatives with harmonised models for access to data, tools, workflows and training. Each cluster unites multiple RIs in their specific scientific domain : Astronomy & Particle Physics, Environmental science, Life Science, Photon and Neutron Science, Scocial Sciences and Humanities.
Please find more information here: https://science-clusters.eu/

Q:Alignment to some of the evaluation criteria will be obscure for scientists who are not “part of the club”, or who have not been involved in the Science Clusters. How to tackle that?

A:The information about the Science Clusters is publicly available in a number of places (Science Clusters website | OSCARS website). We have published all the necessary information to keep everyone informed at the same time and with the same type/amount of information. It is important to note that the call is open for any kind of scientific project, also for scientists who are not connected to, or haven’t participated in the activities of the Science Clusters. They are all eligible. The independent scientific evaluation panel will evaluate proposals on the basis of the criteria here. So, you don’t need to be part of the club to write a super good scientific proposal. The Science Clusters and the Research infrastructures (RIs) have this amazing mandate of providing data and services for everybody, and most of them for free, so take advantage of whatever is there on “on the market” and you will be able to write a great proposal.

Q: What is a RI?

A:RI stays for Research Infrastructure. This can be any kind of collaborative infrastructure that has been built by institutes, universities, consortia from the European member states. Depending on the domain, it can be a large infrastructure, such as a neutron or light source, or particle accelerator, or a telescope, or a distributed infrastructure, a European network of research institutes, universities or similar. Many of them are set up as ERICs (European Research Infrastructure Consortia).

Q:What's the best way to get an overview of and stay up to date on the Science Clusters’ services?

A:More information about the Science Clusters’ services is available in a dedicated page of the OSCARS website.

Q:Does OSCARS act as a funding agency?

A:Yes, but it is not a funding agency. OSCARS is a project funded by the European Union, which has launched and will implement two calls for Open Science projects & services through a cascading-grant mechanism. Its beneficiaries are Research Infrastructures, which are basically the research communities. Due to this and to the limited resources, there will not be a proper Help Desk service as a funding agency would offer. OSCARS supports Open Science and will provide a mentoring service. It is likely that there will be Ambassadors identified among the scientists, who will act as bridges between the PIs and the RIs.

In addition, OSCARS has the goal to consolidate the work of the Science Clusters, further consolidating the development of services and Open Science environments that will be used for Open Research.

Subject/Content

Q:Could you please elaborate on the requirement to have support from the Science Clusters?

A:The Science Clusters deploy a sort of virtual environment for conducting research. This environment is a potential host for a science project, or for a workflow. Then, depending on the domain and on the goals and activities that are proposed, 100% of the science project / workflow, or a smaller fraction of it, can be integrated in this environment. If you are a researcher based in a particular domain / area, have a look at the OSCARS’ website to see which of the Science Clusters is aligned with your domain. There may be even more than one. For any question, reach out to us using the contacts available here. 
There is a page listing the resources that have been developed partly in the EOSC context, and that will obviously help you when writing your proposal, to align the work you want to do with the services out there. In some cases, you might want to develop such services further. In other cases, they may be relevant and might help you build stronger partnerships and proposals.
For example, the Science Cluster for Social Sciences and Humanities (SSHOC) has the SSH Open Marketplace. If you have a look there, you can see all the services and datasets that are already on offer. So, you can reuse some of those in your proposals, or if you think there's something missing then this is where you can propose potential new services, or datasets.

Q: Is Zenodo (related to ESCAPE?) considered a part of EOSC/EOSC service? What about OpenAIRE?

A:Zenodo and OpenAire are both relevant to open science in Europe. They are not an EOSC service, but both are compliant services used by scientific communities in Europe involved in the implementation of open research and open science.

Q:I see no mention of supporting community-driven Open Standards (needed by FAIR principles). Is this taken into account?

A: Supporting Community Driven Open Standards can of course be considered.

Q:Would projects need to include use cases, or pure technology development projects would be eligible?

A: The project's main idea is to increase the scientific impact. It could be a technology development, but if there's no clear scientific impact, it would be difficult to evaluate.

Q:You encourage inter-cluster propositions, but considering the amount of money available, it would be difficult to include a lot of partners.

A:Funding is proportional to the scope and the outcomes of the project, and not to the multidisciplinarity. The latter aspect does not necessarily imply using a high amount of resources.

Q: Is training an eligible activity?

A: Yes. But always consider how your proposal will be impactful and scientifically relevant.

Q: What if some data are copyrighted, can we not deposit them in the repository, but make the data searchable and make the metadata available via CLARIN?

A: Yes. There are a lot of examples of copyright data in Social and Humanities Sciences. CLARIN has a specific page about Oscars open call where you can find more information: https://www.clarin.eu/news/clarin-joining-horizon-europe-oscars-project

Q: OS services seem to be mostly software/middleware. Does OSCARS fund training on FAIR data?

A: If the training is related to open science services with a scientific impact, it can not be excluded. But in the context of the OSCARS Open Call, what is relevant and important are open science projects and open science services. FAIRdata training is a very general topic, it can be a lot of things, so what's important is the scientific impact. If there is specific training to bring in a particular research community that may not already have trained people and if that increases the scientific impact of their work, that would be valuable.

Q:I'm working on a project for researchers to document certain experiments pre-publication, locally producing FAIR metadata in their lab notebooks. Could OSCARS fund the implementation of this tool in several institutes, or research facilities?

A:Yes

Q:If a proposal is about a new service or database for a specific RI, is there a mechanism planned to facilitate contacts between the RI and the proposer?

A: It is expected that these contacts take place before the submission of the proposal and will be even a sort of added value in support of the proposal. 
However, the project itself, and its resources, might be used to build a cooperation with a RI. 
Contact information about the Science Clusters and their RIs are also available via the Science Clusters' website. This might help you to contact the relevant cluster before submitting your proposal.

Q: In the case the research aims to result in a digital tool, what are the required levels of open access to the tool after the project?

A:It could be published in the catalogue of EOSC services. This would especially be the case if a digital tool is at a very high level of maturity. 
In the evaluation, it will also be considered how much impact the tool will have in the immediate and long-term future, and if it benefits one or more domains. So, while writing your proposal, if you are creating a tool, consider writing a few words about the sustainability of said tool after the project ends, to demonstrate that it will not die within a year or so after the project has ended.

Q:Will the available funding be spread evenly between the Science Clusters, or will the Clusters be competing against each other with a theoretical possibility that some Clusters get very little money and some get a lot?

A:There is no such risk, because the mandate that we have to ourselves is to support all Sciences. There is no competition between the Sciences. This is our duty, to encourage and support any kind of domain-based and multi-domain approach.

Q: Can you confirm that exploiting the Science Cluster services means that the research proposed only has to use Open Science practices, and either use or end with public datasets?

A: Yes. Whichever kind of proposal you submit, a requirement is that it has to end with public and reusable datasets. At the same time, it may start out with non-public datasets and it wants to make them public, or it may be using Open Science practices to improve the interoperability of a dataset, or a service, or a technical service. 
It is anyway correct that the emphasis in the proposal should be on using Open Science practices, which will help to get a higher score. 
As a suggestion, one of the ways of building a stronger proposal is to make sure that you reach out and potentially link to and use relevant mature services from the Science Clusters as well, or from the individual research infrastructures of your own Community, if they are operating mature Open Science practices. 
To provide an example, in the Social Sciences and Humanities there might be sensitive data, or restricted data. Should this be the case, it is important to ensure such restricted data are properly documented, by including at least the metadata related to the dataset, making it openly available, and by making it clear how to access the data, e.g., by including the details of a key contact point.

Eligibility

Q:If ‘target community’ is to be read as ‘potential applicant’: how about non legal entities such as science clusters and individual researchers? How can they apply?

A: Individual researchers or a group of researchers in different countries can apply with their own affiliation (a university or a research institute). A Science Cluster by itself cannot apply.
A researcher on its own can't apply though because we need a legal entity to sign the contract (Third-Party Project Contract) and we need an institutional bank account to transfer the money.

Q: If ‘target community’ is something else (e.g. potential users of the envisaged results), then where do we specify who can be a ‘potential applicant’?

A:Target users are the potential applicants as well as the target audience towards whom we disseminate the information of the call.

Q: Is the eligibility assessment checking admin aspects only (such as budget height, duration)?

A: Yes, including eligibility to access EU funding. However please note that third parties receiving financial support are not subject to the rules on eligibility for funding provided in Article 23 of the HE Regulation. At the same time we draw your attention to 13. General Annexes to the Work Programme 2023-2024, p. 8, which excludes entities subject to EU restrictive measures as well as legal entities established in Russia, Belarus, or in non-government-controlled territories of Ukraine from receiving financial support to third parties.

Q: What are the eligibility criteria? Do the usual HE criteria apply, only participants from member states and associated countries can receive funding?

A: No, third parties receiving financial support are not subject to the rules on eligibility for funding provided in Article 23 of the HE Regulation.

Q:Could you please clarify the eligibility of Institutions from non-EU countries and Associated countries to Horizon Europe, such as Switzerland for example?

A: There are no eligibility criteria similar to Horizon Europe, which means it doesn't matter if you are from an Associated country or not. So, for example, the UK and Switzerland are eligible.

Q: Does the applicant / application need to be connected in any way to a beneficiary of a HORIZON Europe financing? (e.g. co-opt them as part of a consortium?)

A: The applicant or application does not need to be connected to a beneficiary of Horizon Europe financing. The organisation does not need a PIC number or to be registered with the EC.

Submission / Grants Platform

Q:Is submission a once-only thing, or are resubmissions or updates of proposals possible up to the deadline?

A:When editing your proposal in the Grants’ Platform, you can save your draft multiple times and then submit your proposal anytime before the deadline. During the 60 days from the call opening, until when your proposal is in draft mode, you may make all the changes you want to. But once you have submitted your proposal no changes can be made afterwards.
You could however create a new proposal in the platform, fill in all the details and the updated content and then submit that updated version and withdraw the earlier submitted proposal.

Q:Can I withdraw my application before the Open Call deadline expires?

A:You can withdraw a submitted application at any time before the call closes via your dashboard. As with any application submitted to our Open Calls, the withdrawn application is stored on the platform and accessible via your dashboard. Do note, however, that only an application saved in draft can be further re-edited. After the formal, time-stamped submission of a proposal, this proposal cannot be modified; only withdrawn from the Open Call and a new application submitted in its place.

Q:Can multiple people edit the same proposal and how will this be handled technically?

A: No, a single proposal has to be submitted and edited by a single user. We suggest revising and building the proposal offline, to then upload the final text in the Grants’ Platform.

Funding

Q:When will we receive the funding?

A: The remaining 15% will be paid after the final deliverables have been provided.
Please be aware that EC funding rules apply (see also the ).

Q: Are travel costs and event attendance to knowledge exchange/training events eligible costs?

A: Yes they are eligible costs.

Q:What kind of items are eligible in this call (can I buy a server)?

A: For the funding we provide the same rules apply as for any EC research funding, that means that for investment/equipment you can't claim the full costs but only the depreciation costs per year and only for the percentage the equipment is used for this specific project. See also the HE Annotated Model Grant Agreement (AGA pages 82, 85ff): "Purchases of equipment, infrastructure or other assets used for the action must be declared as depreciation costs, calculated on the basis of the costs actually incurred and written off in accordance with international accounting standards and the beneficiary’s usual accounting practices. Only the portion of the costs that corresponds to the rate of actual use for the action during the action duration can be taken into account.". Depending on the standard depreciation time for the specific equipment you might only be able to cover a small part of the full costs from project funding.

Q: Can we spend some budget on Open Access article processing charge (APC)?

A: Yes, you can.

QHow do we add in-kind support in the forms?

A: Any in-kind support has to be mentioned in the implementation part of the forms but not in the finance planning. If you are planning to involve some third parties who are providing in-kind contributions without payment, please describe their involvement briefly in the implementation part, the expertise they bring in, and the tasks they will perform.

Q: Can a specific entity serve as the coordinator for multiple proposals simultaneously?

A: No, one specific organisation can only ask for 100,000 to 250,000 EUR. Please keep in mind that we have to support a broad range of communities and sciences.

Q: Could you confirm that funding does not have to be proportional to the duration of the project? For example, is it possible to propose a 12-month project with the maximum budget?

A: Sure, that is possible.

Q: Is there a limit of minimum FTE for one person?

A:If you expect to have only one person in the project, you obviously cannot have more than one FTE, otherwise you need at least two persons in the project. There is no restriction on the number of person months, but of course you need to consider the budget limit. 
If the question is on whether there is a lower limit for the number of person months per person, i.e., if it is possible to have lots of people with a very small amount of time/funding, the answer is no, it's really up to what the project needs. If you need a lot of different knowledge and expertise, i.e., different people contributing small amounts of their time, that is also fine. It really depends on the project. In the part of the proposal with the budget breakdown, applicants need to be able to convince the evaluators on the reliability and effectiveness of the proposed budget for achieving the goals that are proposed.

Q:Subcontracting is allowed according to the EC AGM, is there a suggested budget limit for a subcontractor? If we have subcontracting costs, where do we enter them?

A: Yes, subcontracting is allowed and we have set no limit. You can add the costs to the other costs and explain the situation shortly in the implementation part, what tasks are done by the subcontractor etc.

Q: How detailed, or specific, does the financial plan need to be?

A: Financial plans do not need to be very detailed. We only ask to provide a total of person months and personnel costs and, if applicable, other direct costs. Then, in the case there are more partners, we ask to split person months roughly across the partners and indicate the tasks the partners are doing. This is mainly to help evaluators understand if the expertise in the Consortium matches with what the applicants are planning to do and how the budget is split up.

Q: Are projects fully financed (100%), and am I right that there is no co-financing by the PI and his/her organisation?

A: Funding is covering 100% of your costs, yes.
Co-financing is possible though. If you are proposing a project with specific goals, which you have clearly described, and you ask one penny for that scope, that is the 100% of the lump sum that you will receive. In the same time, if your project is an important phase of a longer-term project with a background where you have received two more pennies from a company or other stakeholders, or a research infrastructure, and there will be a co-participation, together with the single penny coming from OSCARS, that is also possible. You will include this in the description of your project in the proposal form.

This will actually add some value to the proposal, because it highlights the expected impact of the project.

Q: Are you planning to have a forum for funded projects to share the results or outputs with the whole Community? If so, should travel associated with this dissemination activity be included in the proposal financial plan?

A: In OSCARS, we are aiming to organise training events, Open Science camps and conferences dedicated to the funded projects for networking, for exposing the results, and even taking advantage of these occasions to participate in the enhancement of the participation and involvement of researchers in Open Science. We recommend to consider some travelling, for example to the OSCARS annual events and the final event dedicated to the outcomes of the Open Call projects.

Consortium structure

Q: Can we include OSCARS-partners for linking to the Science Clusters?

A: Unfortunately OSCARS partners can't be partners in the Open Call projects.

Q: Can OSCARS partners also not join as in-kind contributors?

A: Organisations involved in OSCARS can join (and prepare) proposals, but not the people from these organisations that are actively involved in OSCARS. But if you are in contact with a research infrastructure/service provider and you want to make clear that you are aligning to their services, the easiest would be to mention that in the implementation part and potentially upload an endorsement letter in addition. We wouldn't expect the organisation/people you are in contact with joining the consortium in that case.

Q: Is it possible to have a Consortium with members of only one EU country?

A:Yes, you can. It doesn't even need to be a country of the EU and there is no requirement for having more EU countries. It could also be one organisation from outside of the EU.

Q: Is there a maximum of Consortium members?

A:No. We haven't set a maximum of Consortium members. However, the available budget is in a way setting a limit, because at one point you are ending up with very small money for all the different Consortium Partners. In the Grants’ Platform is a form for the Principal Investigator (PI), or the coordinator of the project, and one or more for the co-PI(s) from other institutes. This has been included because the proposal can come from a group, but it is important to note that you cannot multiply the 250.000 EUR for the number of co-PIs you have in the project. Projects have a maximum budget and a maximum duration, with one PI and potentially a series of co-PIs.

Q:Is the participation of partners mandatory or can only the coordinator participate w/o additional partners?

A:The participation of partners is not mandatory. It can be just one single scientist who is applying via his organisation or it can be a consortium, whatever fits your project. There's no mandatory consortium or the way the consortium needs to be built with different countries. There are no restrictions in that aspect.

Q: Is it possible for an entity to participate in more than one Consortium either as a coordinator or beneficiary?

A: Yes, in some circumstances it might be.
For example in the case of large multidisciplinary organisations (e.g., CNRS in France, CNR in Italy) to which different organisations from different disciplines belong, there might be more than one proposal coming from the same legal entity. 
Different proposals may also have the same facility, or national institute, or research infrastructure that produces data as a partner. If there is a PI proposing a science project by using data that are generated by this facility, and another proposal is doing another scientific project using data coming from the same facility/-ies, this is also possible, because those research infrastructures are considered as generators, or producers of scientific data, and the scientific communities will exploit/use this data for scientific analysis.

The selection of a proposal will in the end depend on its quality.

Q:Is the call open only for research institutions? If I am a UK-based company, can I still apply?

A:There is an option to indicate the nature of the organisation the PI is affiliated to and one option is SME/industry, so this is possible. There is no restriction on countries as in Horizon Europe in general.

SMEs and NGOs can apply.

Q:Can an Institute that is a beneficiary of the OSCARS Consortium, participate?

A: Yes, they are eligible for funding. All the terms, procedures and approaches to eliminate potential conflicts of interests have been put in place and will be executed according to the contracts with the European Commission. However, staff members that are directly involved in OSCARS should not participate in any proposals.

Additional documents

Q: Do we need to upload documents to complete the proposal on the platform(e.g., CVs, letters of support)?

A: As the main criteria will be the quality of your proposal and the scientific impact, no additional document is required to complete the proposal. Only the filled in the webform needs to be submitted / completed.

Q: Should we add the Reference list as supporting documents? Is there any preferred unified referencing style?

A:There is no specific section for references. You can either add it to the project description, but then it counts to the character limit, or you can upload a supporting document, but we are not asking for a detailed reference list.

Q:Do proposals need endorsement letters?

A:No. Proposals do not need endorsement letters. However, the Grants’ Platform (in the section with the project summary) gives the possibility to link and upload endorsement letters, or additional documentation, e.g., in the case there is a clear statement from a large Consortium. Especially if it is a single beneficiary/PI, this kind of endorsement documents can be of help to the reviewers, to better understand how these projects fit into the context of a scientific domain, or can build a bridge between different domains.

Evaluation

Q:Will the referees be scientists from their fields (e.g. physicists, biologists, chemists, and so on...) or come from the computer sciences?

A:The reviewers will be from the fields of the 5 sciences clusters mentioned but probably mixed with some open science data specialists as well. 
From the LSRI for example, it's a mix, so for the proposals to be evaluated that have computer science involved, we will try and match it with those evaluators. But it will not be only computer scientists.

Q:Can you clarify how the evaluation will be organised?

A:There are two evaluators per proposal, and there is a panel that has an overview of all proposals. The evaluation will take place according to the rules that are usually

applied in EC calls and are part of, and agreed upon, in the Grant Agreement that was signed between the coordinator of OSCARS and the European Commission. In summary, we are going to have independent reviews by more than one reviewer per proposal. A ranking list will be produced based on the evaluation reports from the external evaluators, and based on the list the funding decision will be confirmed by the members of the Science Cluster Board (SCB). Projects will be funded on the basis of the proposed budget.

Q:Can a project be successful but not get all the funding they requested?

A:A project will get zero, or 100% of what was requested in the proposal.

Q:When the result of submission is shared with those who submitted a proposal, will it include some feedback from the reviewers?

A:Yes, feedback from reviewers will be shared. OSCARS commits in addition to publishing the list of funded projects.

Q:In many calls, the evaluation committees tend to give an unfair advantage to the PIs who have already won many grants in the past to the disadvantage of younger researchers with a smaller track record. Will this be the case here as well?

A:There is no such thing. In addition, we do not ask for a CV. We are actually especially interested in supporting early-stage career researchers.

Contract

Q: Will there be a contract/agreement that needs to be signed and who is signing it?

A: Yes, there will be a so-called Third-Party Project Agreement (TPPA) that sets out the details of the funding regulations. It will be signed by the coordinator of OSCARS at CNRS-LAPP and the coordinator/lead organisation of the funded project. Please note that as the TPPA is a standard contract based on the OSCARS Grant Agreement and the Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement, the provisions of the contracts are not open to individual negotiations. This ensures the equal treatment of all OSCARS Open Call applicants and a timely conclusion of the TPPAs.

Q:Should we include a draft of a formal agreement if we want to work with a start-up company?

A:As the TPPA will be signed between your institution and the OSCARS coordinator, we do not need a formal agreement.
If your organisation needs to have a formal contract with the start-up to then sign the OSCARS TPPA, so yes you can do that. In this case, you might need to make sure that the output from your collaboration will be openly available for all, as part of the Open Science project.

Q: If someone changes their affiliation, would they be able to move the money to the new institution/legal entity?

A:As the contract is linked to the organisation and not the scientist directly that would be difficult and taking into account the lifetime of OSCARS Project we do not recommend transferring the money to a new institution if someone changes their affiliation.

Q:What happens if a project led by a CNRS unit is successful? Will there be a TPPA between the CNRS and the CNRS?

A:Actually, yes. It is foreseen, because on one side the coordinator will be the legal entity that is providing the funding (i.e, the president of the CNRS) and on the other side will be the PI, i.e., the researcher who is going to commit to a scientific project.

Implementation

Q:How early can a project start (if funded)?

A:Once the project has received the positive funding decision and the contract is signed (at the latest end of April), the project can start straight away, so earliest would be the beginning of May.

Q:Can We use other open-source services and platforms besides the introduced services in the OSCARS website?

A:Yes, you can use other open-source services and platforms.

Q: What is the maximum time to implement the funded projects and do we need to start immediately after the signature of the TPPA?

A:Project duration can be between 1 and 2 years. All projects need to start at the latest 4 months after the signature of the TPPA. This time is meant to be used for recruitment or other necessary preparations for the project.

Q:How do OSCARS partners obtain funding? Is it Directly from OSCARS or indirectly from the institution of the PI?

A:OSCARS will fund the coordinator of the proposal that is awarded and the coordinator will then be responsible to distribute the money to the different partners.

Q: If the project team isn't complete at the time of application, is it possible to recruit someone only once you've been selected?

A:Yes, you can recruit someone after the funding decision has been made. We expect that some projects will not have all the staff members in place but intend to hire after they have received the funding decision and signed the contract. That's also the reason projects have 4 months after the expected date of signature of the contract before they are supposed to start. Extending a contract of an existing staff member using the funds from the OSCARS Open Call project is also possible.

Q: Who is designated to administer the money? Is it the PI's home institution? Is it distributed among the different partners involved in the project? Or an institution that is freely chosen by the partners?

A: In the case of a consortium, one organisation needs to take the lead in the proposal and sign the contract with CNRS (OSCARS’ coordinator) on behalf of the consortium. This organisation is then responsible to distribute the money within their Consortium.

Support

Q:Is any mentoring service foreseen throughout the implementation of the project?

A:Yes, mentoring is foreseen for successful proposals. They will get help from the Science Clusters during the execution of the project.

Reporting

Q:Do we have to submit regular technical reports?

A: There is no formal technical report to be submitted but monitoring of progress will be performed by the Consortium. The applicants must commit to provide 30 days after the end of the project, for public dissemination, the following deliverables:

• A final project summary in PDF format of maximum 5000 characters, including spaces.
• A presentation
• A “scientific journal or journal-type” article summarising the main project results and methodology used to achieve them.

They also need to present their results at the OSCARS final (or dedicated) event in Brussels.

Q:Do we have to submit a financial report?

A:There is no finance report required. The funding will be provided in the form of a lump-sum.

Q:How are the expenses justified after the work is done?

A:Funding is provided as a lump sum, based on the same mechanism the EC is using more and more, which means that we are not asking for any finance reporting. However, we monitor and expect that the declared scientific impacts and outcomes will be achieved and that results will be declared, because we are part of a global action and we need to provide the feedback that the European Commission is expecting.