SUSFOOD - An FP7 ERA-NET on Sustainable Food Production and Consumption Guidelines for applicants for the 2nd Transnational Call for Proposals (full-proposal phase) Closing date for full-proposals: August 01 st 2014, 3.00 p.m. CET 1
Table of content 1. Important information... 3 2. Call Announcement... 3 3. Consortium Agreement... 3 4. Publishable data... 4 5. Eventual changes to the Pre-Proposal... 4 6. Use of the SUSFOOD online Submission Tool... 4 Summary & Project Consortium... 5 Description of the project... 5 Budget plan... 6 Work Packages... 6 Annexes... 6 Submission finalisation... 6 Engagement letter... 7 7. Call Secretariat... 7 8. Evaluation of Full Proposals... 8 9. Project monitoring, meetings and reporting... 8 ANNEXE:... 10 Template for an engagement letter... 10 2
1. Important information The Full Proposal submission occurs online via the SUSFOOD Submission Tool. The deadline for the submission of the Full Proposal is August, 1 st 2014, 3 p.m. CET. Table 1. Timeline of the Call Event Invitation for submission of full proposals/ Open the Online Submission Tool Date 02/06/2014 Closing date for full proposals 01/08/2014 3 p.m. CET 3 p.m. (CET) Evaluation/Selection (peer review) August 2014 Selection Meeting 09/10/2014 Negotiation and start of the projects November-June 2015 2. Call Announcement This document supplements the Call Announcement of the 2 nd SUSFOOD Call for Proposals and provides additional necessary information for the submission of the Full Proposal in the frame of the second step of this call. The Call Announcement remains valid and must be additionally considered for the submission of the Full Proposal. Especially, the national regulations must be respected. The second step of the call starts on June 02 nd, 2014. Only applicants invited by the SUSFOOD Call Secretariat have access to the SUSFOOD Submission Tool for this second step and are allowed to submit a Full Proposal (a successful Pre- Proposal in the first step is mandatory to enter this Full Proposal-step). 3. Consortium Agreement Applicants submitting a Full Proposal are strongly advised to prepare a Consortium Agreement in order to address matters such as the regulation of intellectual property rights and actions to be taken in the event of unsatisfactory performance by one or more partners. In some countries, such an agreement might be required for release of the funds. Applicants have to 3
obey national regulations regarding this issue. Support for the preparation of a consortium agreement can be found on the DESCA webpage. 4. Publishable data A list of the finally funded projects will be published at the end of the evaluation process (after the funding recommendation). Therefore applicants should be aware that the following data from the Full Proposal will be published: Project Title and Project Acronym Theme and Topic of the project Organisation name and country of each partner A short publishable summary of the project 5. Eventual changes to the Pre-Proposal Each consortium submitting a Full Proposal in the frame of the second step of this call has previously submitted a Pre-Proposal. The SUSFOOD Call Group expects that the main content and the consortium composition will stay unchanged in the full-proposal. An exception will become valid when conditions in the notification letter claim for changes, i.e. when one partner has to be substituted or the budget has to be adjusted. In these cases, the consortium is strongly advised to get in contact with the involved national contacts. 6. Use of the SUSFOOD online Submission Tool The Full Proposal submission occurs online via the SUSFOOD Submission Tool. All fields in the tool are mandatory. It is the duty of the coordinator to enter the data online, excepted for the individual partner description. It is strongly recommended to save regularly the changes (button at the bottom of each page) in order to avoid any data loss. For security issues, an automatic logout is set up within this tool. Data entered by the coordinator and the project partners in the SUSFOOD Submission Tool will be saved in a database and will be used to generate the Full Proposal document. The Full Proposal document is available for information only (it is not required e.g. to print it and send a hardcopy of the Full Proposal to the SUSFOOD Call Secretariat) at any time for download and provides an overview of all entered data. 4
Summary & Project Consortium These parts (Basic Project data) contain already the data extracted from the submitted Pre-Proposal. It is recommended not to change these fields. A short project summary (may be published by SUSFOOD; max. 2 000 characters including spaces!) must be added. The part Profile consists of one page per partner (partner description) in the consortium. Each partner is responsible for updating/completing his partner description. It is possible to add up to 5 team members (persons involved in the project) in the partner description, and to upload one CV (pdf-file) for each partner (not per team member!). The size of one CV may not be beyond one DIN A4 page. There is also one field provided, where the partner should explain her/his expertise, competences and planned tasks within the proposed project (justifying her/his project costs) (max. 2000 characters including spaces). One upload field is provided in order to upload the signed engagement letter of the partner. More information on this letter is provided below. Description of the project This part consists of text fields with size (character; always incl. spaces) limitation. As explained in the indications, it is possible to relate to other parts of the proposal in the textual statements, e.g. to justification part of the budget plan, to the work package part or even to charts uploaded. Project Goals (max. 1200 characters) Scientific and technological project description, including existing knowledge and innovation degree (max. 10 000 characters) Added value of your project compared to the state-of-the-art (max. 4 000 characters) Thematic and policy relevance of the proposed project (max. 2 000 characters) Expected impact of the proposed project, exploitation of the results (max. 4 000 characters) Resources of the partners and description of adequacy in infrastructure and other means for the implementation of the project/ Pertinence of the consortium composition (max. 2 000 characters) Communication and dissemination plan (max. 4 000 characters) Work plan and management of the project (max. 2000 characters for each WP) 5
Budget plan All data in this table should include Value Added Taxes (VAT). Only integer numbers without special characters or empty spaces are accepted. The table provided should be filled in with: Project costs (personal costs, travel costs ) in Euro. For partners from countries whose currency is not the Euro, estimates should be entered. The requested funding amount in Euro. One cell is also provided for partners from countries whose currency is not the Euro, in order to provide the requested funding amount in their own currency. The total costs and funding rates are automatically calculated. A brief description for justification of the budget is recommended (max. 500 characters per partner). Work Packages In project management, a work package (WP) is a subset of a project that can be assigned to a specific part for execution. In this part, it is possible to add up to 10 WPs. For each WP information like the WP number, name, start and end month, the involved partners and their respective work effort (Person-Month) within this WP are obligatory. The aim of the WP must be explained via a text field (max. 1 000 characters), as well as the risks and contingency plan (max. 1 000 characters). Tasks, deliverables and milestones may be added too. Annexes This part provides upload fields for: GANTT Chart Up to 6 Annexe Charts (optional) which can be used e.g. to illustrate the proposed project. Submission finalisation The electronic Full Proposal submission is completed when at least all mandatory fields in the tool have been correctly filled in and the coordinator has pressed the Submit -button. All partners of the consortium will be informed about the successful submission. After this submission, partner accounts are locked (no more changes possible for them in Part B Partner Description), but the coordinator still has the possibility to update other data in the proposal and then to submit again. If 6
necessary, the coordinator can unlock a partner account, e.g. if this partner needs to change his partner description, and then submit again. It is therefore strongly recommended not to wait for the last minute to submit, since changes and re-submission (the coordinator presses the Submit -button again) are still possible before the call s deadline. Engagement letter Additionally to the electronic Full Proposal submission, each partner of the applying consortium has to submit online a signed copy of an engagement letter. This is a prerequisite for the final completion of the Full Proposal and its peer-review evaluation. A template is provided in the Annex as support, describing the necessary minimal content of the letter, but partners may build their own letter. 7. Call Secretariat The Call Secretariat will provide administrative support to applicants regarding the call, call documents and procedures. It is the primary point of contact between the research project consortium and the SUSFOOD Governing Board for all general matters in relation to the call. SUSFOOD Call Secretariat: Germany; Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE) Annika Fuchs Phone: +49 228-6845-3746 e-mail: annika.fuchs@ble.de Questions concerning the submission tool: Germany; Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH (Juelich) Veronika Deppe Phone: +49 2461-61-9416 e-mail: v.deppe@fz-juelich.de The National Contact Points are supporting the Call Secretariat and should be contacted for all matters regarding national regulations and funding. Please see an overview of the National Contact Points in the Call Announcement. 7
8. Evaluation of Full Proposals Full Proposals that are submitted in time will be subjected to a peer review evaluation by a panel of international experts, the Scientific Evaluation Committee (SEC). The SEC ranks the proposals based on a set of criteria: To what extent the project approach is relevant to the call topic(s) Scientific quality and innovation of the proposal Degree to which the proposal will overcome/support important barriers/development opportunities for sustainable food production and consumption Excellence of partners and added European value Management, (appropriate) budget, and workplan Dissemination and stakeholder communication Based on this ranking, the Call Group will decide which projects will be recommended for national funding. The SUSFOOD Call Secretariat will inform coordinators having submitted a Full- Proposal about the final funding decision. It is the duty of the coordinator to inform his/her project partners about the results. Following this, project partners of Full Proposals recommended for funding have to contact as soon as possible their National Contact Persons in order to handle the formal funding decision and to enable the earliest possible start of the project. The project performance will not start before all partners have achieved a funding agreement with their respective funding organisation. 9. Project monitoring, meetings and reporting Partners from each funded project are expected to organise project meetings (such as kick-off meeting, final meeting). The costs for these meetings must be included in the project budgets. In order to promote the coherence of this international research programme, in addition to reporting required by the national rules, project coordinators will be required to provide a mid-term report and to submit a final report to the Call Secretariat about the results of the project. Dissemination of project outputs is also obligatory and in the responsibility of the funded project partners. Plans for dissemination of the results have to be described in the full proposals and are considered in the evaluation procedure. 8
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ANNEXE: TEMPLATE FOR AN ENGAGEMENT LETTER To be submitted electronically for each partner on https://www.susfood-era.net/submission SUSFOOD Call Secretariat Your adress Federal Office for Agriculture and Food (BLE) Annika Fuchs GERMANY 2nd Call for Proposals of the ERA-Net SUSFOOD Letter of engagement Project title:. City, Date We hereby confirm that organization, partner number is committed to participate as a full partner to the project project title, which is submitted in the frame of the 2nd Call for Proposals of the ERA-Net SUSFOOD. Organization has contacted its National Contact Person to ensure its eligibility and the viability of its budget plan. Mr/Ms Team member 1, function will represent organization within this project. Signature of.: 10