Deadline: 29 October 2021, at 16.00 

Expected duration of participation: 3 months
Total EU funding available: 18 grants for the value of €12 500 each, total €225 000

Submission & evaluation process:

The proposal will take into account the RDA Guiding principles and demonstrate commitment to it. Proposals should drive the principles of openness and community activities.

Candidates will be asked to submit an application that will be evaluated according to the following criteria:

1. Excellence: 
   • A statement describing the commitment to the vision of EOSC, the FAIR movement, national Open Science agendas (implementation), links to European data infrastructures or similar federated infrastructures. (25%)
   • A brief summary of previous and current activities demonstrating the applicant’s involvement and contributions to RDA related activities, Working/Interest Groups, development and/or promotion and/or adoption of RDA Recommendations and Outputs in European Institutions. (25%)
2. Impact: Sustainability and impact potential of the proposal and how this can be carried forward within the context of EOSC and RDA. Applicants should put forward plans for continuing the work beyond the funding period. Methodology of application. The proposal must be thought through, well-written, clear and demonstrate the methodology works. (25%)
3. Implementation (quality and efficiency): 
   • A summary of the proposed existing framework, how it is relevant to RDA. Outline the scenario for optimisation and update, the relationship to and impact on EOSC, and how an accompanying technical update can be created. (20%)
   • Evaluation will also consider the following criteria to establish balanced and diverse distribution of the grants: 
     • Geographical balance,
     • Gender balance,
     • Preference to candidates in underrepresented fields within RDA. (5%)

Evaluators

The applications will be evaluated by experts with insights to the RDA and group recommendations who have no conflict of interest (the applicant is not employed by the evaluator’s organisation nor is/are the recommendation(s) a direct result of their work).

Word limit for applications

The word limit for your application will be via fields in a form each with a specific word limit. You can start with an application and save it in the system to return to it later. You are allowed to upload accompanying documentation, e.g. project plan and methodology.

Criteria and conditions

• Applicants should demonstrate that they have been or are currently involved in RDA as an active member, participant, chair or contributor to a WG or IG especially in the last 12-18 months.
• Be proactive and willing to contribute to RDA recommendations or outputs testing and adoption particularly in European institutions.
• Have a good understanding of EOSC, the FAIR movement.
• Reside and/or work in a EU country or associate countries.

Further conditions

• This call is not open to members of the EOSC Future consortium. Staff working on the EOSC Future project (i.e. directly funded through a beneficiary (its department or unit executing EOSC Future activities), as a LTP or seconded personnel) are not eligible to apply for grants under the RDA Open Calls and will be asked to tick a Declaration of Honour box upon application. Other staff of these participating institutions are eligible.
• If the evaluator’s institution applies for an RDA Open Call, the evaluator should declare their conflict of interest in reviewing the application.
• All successful applicants will have to provide a plan for a sound dissemination of the outputs created, openly licensed. A mid-term and final term report will be submitted, following a contractual agreement, highlighting progress, use cases and lessons learned.
• All results will be made available on the RDA site for 4 years. Successful applicants may be asked to share their details (photo, bio) for dissemination purposes.
• The work will need to be completed within 3 months within receipt of award.

Task description

The Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda of the European Open Science Cloud (2021) has as one of its guiding principles to shape its development “[r]esearch-community centred: EOSC will place research at the centre of the initiative and will thus prioritise engagement with research communities to understand their requirements, helping them and ensuring academic sovereignty of research data”, stressing the importance that technical aspects of EOSC are also co-created by the communities they serve. In this context, RDA and EOSC Future announce the opening of the first round of calls focusing on RDA Recommendations and Technical support. EOSC is building a federated system to support Europe’s data output and works to harmonise and develop a web of FAIR data. Many trusted frameworks already exist for data interoperability and these need to be refined and further developed.

The call for Optimising RDA Frameworks for EOSC

In this context, this call is seeking applications from individuals or organisations around the concept of improving existing technical data frameworks while at the same time leveraging on existing RDA recommendations and outputs. Successful proposals will focus on maintaining, optimising and documenting existing frameworks with particular reference to RDA’s Outputs and Recommendations. Special attention will be given to mapping out how to reimplement the frameworks in the context of EOSC and make relevant documentation available. Proposals are expected to detail a future vision, for example of how the community will build future iterations so that future communities can easily operationalise the frameworks.
Successful applications should consider existing implementation scenarios and whether further documentation is needed, for example: Is the guidance up to date, and ready to operationalise; what communities can be involved to update it; are they aligned to new emerging standards, global or European. The aim is to leverage on community resources and review the existing processes for implementation.

The following outcomes should be considered in successful applications:

• Analysis of existing technical documentation and if it is fit for purpose, where it can be optimised.
• RDA Recommendations: promoting existing recommendations within a community.
• Translating an RDA recommendation into a technical document or a manual and set out how future communities can use it.
• Provide a model for how the RDA recommendations would work in the EOSC environment, for example integration into horizontal or disciplinary infrastructures and interfaces and implementation scenarios for the EOSC federating core.
• Frameworks should be based on existing RDA outputs and recommendations.

Context and Background

RDA is running a series of calls, in the context of the EOSC Future project, to further enable integration and take up of EOSC services. The purpose of these RDA Open Calls is to engage the community from a bottom up approach to contribute their know-how to EOSC. The purpose of these grants is to enable communities outside of EOSC to leverage EOSC services. This first call iteration specifically targets small projects to show implementation and take up. It aims to support and encourage examples of adoption of existing RDA recommendations and outputs which can benefit the community around EOSC and to promote examples and lessons learnt.

The scope is wide-ranging and projects should be short, and focused for a period of three months.