News:

On Friday, 1 March 2024, we have hosted a Question & Answer session for interested applicants for the 1st Geo-INQUIRE Transnational Access Call to European research infrastructures. A short introduction presentation can be found here and a summary of the most important Questions & Answers here.

If you have additional questions, feel free to write an email with your technical question to the contact person of the installation. For general questions regarding the process please contact geo-i_tagfz-potsdam.de.

1. Scope and call conditions

The 1^st Geo-INQUIRE call for Transnational Access to research infrastructures is open  to receive applications from interested users from 9 January until 15 March 2024. Application for access should be submitted online through the Geo-INQUIRE website here!  

The access provided through Geo-INQUIRE is free of charge for the selected users, and include all the access costs necessary to perform the proposed research, such as equipment, support personnel at the installation, consumables, training for external users, among others.

Specific installations provide financial travel and subsistence support for the users to visit the installation. To understand if this type of support is available at the installation of choice and under which conditions, users must contact the installation prior to the application.

For questions regarding the submission of proposals, you can contact geo-i_tagfz-potsdam.de.  For any questions regarding the installations and viability of projects, please consult the contact person in the installation of your choice.

The call is open to researchers, technicians, students and other specialists working in the fields of research covered by the installations. However, other scientific fields will also be considered, if the proposed projects are feasible and relevant for the Geo-INQUIRE research topics. Information about the capabilities and research topics of each individual installation are described at the Geo-INQUIRE website.

2. Eligibility rules

Transnational Access (TA) will be provided to selected user groups (teams of one or more researchers), hereto defined as users. Users must apply through their home organisation (place of work). No applications from private persons will be accepted.

The principal investigator (PI) and the majority of their team members must work in a country other than the country where the installation of choice is located. Access to users (or the majority of team members) working in countries other than an EU Member State or Horizon Europe associated country is limited to 20% of the total access provided.

Access will be granted only to users that are allowed to disseminate the generated results through open access means. The resulting data, products, services, among others, should be fed back into Geo-INQUIRE supported Virtual Access (VA) services with the latest version of the CC-BY license, no longer than 6 months after the conclusion of the access and no later than 30 March 2026. The same applies to resulting publications. Exceptions may apply and will be granted by the relevant Geo-INQUIRE Consortium bodies, if the users are working for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME).

3. Application procedure

Before submission, potential applicants are strongly advised to email the contact person associated with the installation of choice to seek guidance on the feasibility of their project. User groups requesting access must apply in written form by completing the application template and providing the requested documentation. All documentation must be provided in one single pdf file through the application tool at the project website. Only applications submitted via the website will be considered for evaluation. The PI is responsible for the submission and will be the contact point between the installation and the applicants. Therefore, the PI must provide their first name, last name, email address, attach the application form and accept the terms and conditions.   

Documentation necessary:

• Application form filled in by the PI
• Short CV of the PI and team members, showing their capability of performing the experiment
• In case of PIs which are undergraduate students or PhD candidates, a support letter from the supervisor.

4. Evaluation procedure

Applications will be evaluated in a two-step procedure.

First step: Feasibility evaluation

This step will be performed by the installations providing access, within their Technical Evaluation Boards (TEBs). Each TEB will:

1. perform an eligibility assessment: completeness of the application, compliance with the access rules and conditions and ethics self-assessment;
2. establish if the project is technically, logistically, and financially feasible, given the resources offered by the specific installation;
3. assess if there are any Health, Safety and Environment aspects which need to be considered (restrictions), e.g.  if substances that visiting researchers may use are allowed;
4. evaluate the technical capability of the team to carry on the project, considering their preparedness and defined time schedule, given the training that will be provided by the specific installation and the technical and scientific support available.

Each application will be evaluated as: Positive (pass the technical evaluation), Revision requested (adjustments are necessary), or Negative (did not pass the technical evaluation). If revision is requested, the applicants will be informed about the necessary adjustments and will have 2 weeks to update or withdraw their application. Revised applications will be evaluated as Positive or Negative after the adjustments.

Second step: Scientific excellence of the proposal

All the applications that passed the first step, will be evaluated by the Transnational Access Review Panel (TARP), based on the scientific merit of the proposal and quality of the applicants. Each application will receive a score from 3 to 16, according to the following criteria:

1. Ground-breaking nature and potential impact of the research project (score 1 to 6): Scientific objectives, innovation of the proposal, impact of the proposal for the scientific community, publication plan.
2. Methodology and implementation (score 1 to 6): Scientific methodology and implementation plan, data distribution as Virtual Access (VA).
3. Quality of the PI and the team (score 1 to 4): Curriculum Vitae of the PI, expertise and complementarity of the team members

A threshold of 8/16 is required to pass to the second step of the evaluation.  After the final ranking inclusion criteria (next section) will be applied as appropriate.

5. Inclusion criteria

Geo-INQUIRE promotes diversity and inclusion within the scope of the project, including the applications for Transnational Access. Therefore, applications from female PIs and applications from PIs working in one of the widening countries, associated countries and outermost regions of Horizon Europe will be given special attention during the evaluation process. Widening countries are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Associated countries include Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Faroe Islands, Georgia, Iceland, Israel, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, New Zealand, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine and United Kingdom. Outermost regions include La Réunion, Mayotte, Canarias, Azores, Madeira, Saint-Martin, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyana.

6. Installations providing access within the 1st call

ECCSEL-ERIC: CO₂ Capture, Utilisation, Transport and Storage (CCUS)

High Performance Computing for the simulation of geophysical phenomena and probabilistic hazard analysis

Testbeds

7. Terms and conditions to be accepted by users submitting applications

The following personal data is collected within the scope of the application process: first name, last name, academic degree, email address, nationality, gender, home organisation and country of home organisation of each team member applying for access.

The project Principal Investigator (PI) is responsible for the veracity and completeness of the information provided about themselves and the other team members. If PIs and/or team members work in one of the Geo-INQUIRE partner organisations, they should not be directly involved in the Geo-INQUIRE, therefore, be external to the project.

All collected data will be accessed by consortium partners, its affiliated entities, and the responsible consortium bodies, only for the purposes of the evaluation procedures. No data will be transferred to third parties.

Data shall be accessed by consortium partners or external board members outside of the EU, under the rules of the project’s Data Management Plan (DMP) and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), for evaluation purposes.

Data shall be kept at least until after 5 years of the project conclusion, following contractual definitions between the Consortium and the EU.

Data and information will be transferred to the Research Executive Agency of the European Commission, the Granting Authority, at any time upon their request.  

The name, home organisation and project title of the selected users will be publicly available in the project website after access is granted and successfully negotiated.

Identity verification is considered to be done by the applicant’s home organisation. The Geo-INQUIRE Consortium will not handle or request identity documents (such as Passport or identity cards, among others).

The installations providing access may request identity information to abide with their internal practices. None of this information is allowed to be made public under the context of or related to the Geo-INQUIIRE Consortium.

Access will be granted based on contractual arrangements between the User and the Access Provider.