Newly Designed FWF Application Guidelines now Available Online

21.12.2018

The newly designed application guidelines for all funding programmes without deadlines are now available on the FWF website and are valid from 1 January 2019. The revised application forms will be installed in the electronic submission portal at the beginning of January 2019.

As already announced, the FWF has implemented a fundamental revision and standardisation of the application guidelines. These adjustments apply to the application guidelines of all funding programmes without submission deadlines, taking into account programme-specific differences, from 1 January 2019 and are available immediately.

A transition period has been put in place until the end of February 2019 for the submission of project applications in accordance with the requirements of the previous application guidelines (August 2018 version). Project proposals submitted via the electronic submission portal "elane" before 1 January will thus retain their data in the forms and their general validity, provided that they are submitted formally — and completely — before 1 March 2019. Project proposals within the framework of international calls for proposals published in 2018 with deadlines for submission must continue to be submitted in accordance with the currently applicable application guidelines (August 2018 version).

The most important changes at a glance:

  • A description of the expected degree of scientific innovation or novelty is explicitly requested in the proposal. This aspect will also be addressed by the reviewers as part of their evaluation.

  • The academic abstract must correspond to a defined structure. The FWF expects that this will make the process of identifying reviewers faster and more efficient.

  • The cost justification must be given in a separate annex to the project application. In the past, incomplete cost justifications were often the reason for the resubmission of project proposals, which should thus be avoided as far as possible.

  • The national and international cooperation partners that are essential for the implementation of the project must be clearly named with regard to their role and tasks and their cooperation must be documented in collaboration letters.

  • The description of a dissemination plan as well as an explanation of the expected far-reaching effects of the project is no longer necessary.

  • For newly funded projects, an open access policy on research data including a data management plan will be introduced to help ensure that research data generated or analysed in FWF projects should be findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable in the long term.

The FWF will provide applicants with an online glossary of the most important terms from the new application guidelines and a newly compiled FAQ on its website in January 2019. The electronic submission portal "elane" contains additional checkboxes to ensure that the submitted documents are complete. The goal is to avoid the resubmission of project documents as far as possible in the future.

The application guidelines of the funding programmes with deadlines for submission as well as the coordinated programmes (SFBs, research groups, etc.) will also be revised and published in good time according to their deadlines.

To the application documents of the FWF programmes:
https://www.fwf.ac.at/en/research-funding/application/