Applicant Guidelines

What is on offer?

EOSC-Life brings together 13 Life Science research infrastructures (LS RIs) to create an open collaborative space for digital biology. The aim of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is to enable ground-breaking research, and to generate new knowledge by linking the life science community to a variety of interdisciplinary data resources and a platform of data analysis tools. Publishing or re-using FAIR data resources and running workflows in the cloud is becoming increasingly important for researchers and the sensitive nature of much of the data produced and used in life science research presents a specific challenge for data sharing and cloud computing. EOSC-Life is offering training, advice and assistance from data experts, tool developers and cloud specialists, alongside financial support for projects including support for the use of community or public cloud providers , to enable life science researchers to connect their research to the cloud.

The Digital Life Science Call will provide both funding for the project team and if needed technical expertise and training from the EOSC-Life consortium to enable the delivery of complex cloud-connected life science research projects with a focus on sensitive research and health data. Sensitivity of the data may arise from its personal nature (sensitive personal data as defined in the GDPR, e.g. health data, biological samples and associated personal data, genetic data, individual research data, etc.), but can also be caused by biohazard concerns (e.g. Dual Use Research of Concern) or application of the Nagoya protocol.
Funding allocated to the project team can only contribute to the salary costs of experts working on the project at an academic institution that is already a partner in the EOSC-Life consortium. Other members of the project team external to the consortium can only receive reimbursement for travel and consumables costs. We expect to provide up to 70,000 €/project for direct personnel costs and dataset access. Applicants will be expected to provide a budget within the application form.
Successful applicants are able to obtain additional funding to support running their workflows or analysis activities on a cloud provider. Any further details to access this funding resource can be found contacting the Cloud deployment and resources experts from WP7. Some additional technical expertise may also be available to support your cloud deployment alongside your own technical experts.

Areas covered by EOSC-Life experts:

Data curation, handling and integration for deploying into the cloud (AKA WP1)
Tool interoperability, workflows and containerisation (AKA WP2)
Cloud deployment and resources (AKA WP7)
Sensitive data handling (AKA WP4)

What projects are eligible?

Applications are invited from scientists working on research projects within one or more of the following life science domains:
1) Biobanking
2) Bioinformatics
3) Chemical biology
4) Clinical research
5) Functional genomics
6) Biological and biomedical Imaging
7) Marine organisms
8) Microbial resources
9) Pathogenic microorganisms
10) Plant phenotyping
11) Structural biology
12) Systems biology
13) Translational medicine

The project must present a clear life-science use-case and contribute to and/or take advantage of cloud-based data and analysis. The objective of this Open Call is to make sensitive data and/or tools and workflows dealing with such data available to the EOSC and the scientific community for example by using anonymised, pseudonymised, or synthetic versions of such data.

Only projects falling into one (or more) of these categories will be eligible:

1. Projects involving sensitive data from/about humans:
  -projects using anonymised/pseudonymised datasets
  -projects using substitute synthetic representations of sensitive datasets
  -projects having the legal and ethical framework in place for the processing of sensitive personal data in the sense of the GDPR
2. Projects involving non-human sensitive data

For any sensitive datasets to be used, applicants must be able to demonstrate they have already arranged access to the dataset(s) prior to submission.
Data and workflows need to be available at the point of application and may not be generated from scratch. If using anonymised or pseudonymised datasets, data needs to already be anonymised/pseudonymised at the point of application.
The applicant must have considered the legal and ethical framework necessary to carry out their project including the data processing and security requirements that might constrain the availability of any cloud provider that they plan to use.
Due to the maximum project duration of 1 year and the requirements for project work to start within 2 months after award of funding, projects requiring additional ethical approval (e.g. pending decision from an ethics committee) may not be considered.
Projects will be considered if they make resources (data, workflows...) available within the EOSC that have a wide and demonstrable impact and use beyond a single project.
Projects should not aim to improve/modify already available datasets and workflows (e.g: curation of pre-existing dataset, modification of existing workflows).
Projects focusing on software development are not eligible for this call.

Applicants must use the “Contact Experts” button to be assigned EOSC-Life experts for each applicable area relevant to their project, in order to discuss project feasibility. This contact should be made as early as possible before submitting their proposal to allow sufficient time for consultations with the experts. The deadline for new consultation requests is 5pm CEST 28 July 2021. Consultations can be carried out up until the submission deadline on 29 September 2021. However, we strongly urge you to schedule and conclude your expert consultation early to ensure that all questions regarding your proposal can be properly addressed. Our technical experts reserve the right to offer only limited consultation in the final two weeks prior to submission if the number of consultation requests exceeds capacity.

EOSC-Life cannot guarantee that applicable ethical and legal conditions have been met for the project and assumes no liability for ethical or legal compliance by the applicants. The applicant is responsible for obtaining all legal and ethical approval required for their project within the project timeframe.

Who is eligible?

Please note that only EOSC-Life partners (beneficiaries and third parties explicitly named in the Grant Agreement) are eligible to apply.
Budget will be assigned to the applicant(s) according to the budget allocation in the proposal from the budget in WP3 reserved for this call. Project team members external to the EOSC-Life consortium will not be eligible to directly receive a budget for the implementation of the project. They can receive reimbursement of travel and consumables costs through the main applicant institution that is a member of the consortium.

Maturation phase

Before submitting a proposal, you must contact our technical experts to either discuss the type of support you are requesting in one or more of the areas of expertise listed above, or, if you are not requesting technical support from EOSC-Life and providing the expertise in-house, to discuss your proposed project. You can get in touch with our experts via the “Contact Experts” buttons in the first step of the application. To expedite the assignment of the most qualified EOSC-Life expert, please provide answers to the questions in the maturation phase questionnaire when making first contact. One or more experts will then be assigned to your proposal under development to discuss your requirements and align these with their available resources, bring in technical perspectives, and provide feedback on the proposal to help you refine your application.

We advise you to make contact with the experts at the earliest opportunity to ensure there is sufficient time for consultation and to refine your proposal. Deadline for new consultation requests is 5pm CEST 28 July 2021.

After the consultation with the EOSC-Life experts your proposal needs to be submitted in ARIA before the final call deadline 5pm CEST 29 September 2021.

Assessment criteria

Proposal assessment will be split into two stages:

1. Technical feasibility and maturity assessment performed by technical experts within the EOSC-Life consortium
2. Scientific excellence and impact assessment performed by external scientific experts

To be accepted as an EOSC-Life Digital Life Science Call funded project, the proposal must pass both stages.

Experts will be looking for projects which demonstrate:

Scientific excellence and impact
Potential to make available new valuable resources (data/services/methods) within the EOSC and for the scientific communities represented by the Life Science Research Infrastructures.
Feasibility of the project within the EOSC-Life runtime (the project must be completed and reported before February 2023 and start within 2 months after project acceptance).
Availability of resources within the project team: people power, computational & financial resources.
Availability of resources within the EOSC-Life technical expert teams: if EOSC-Life expert support is required in your project, please contact the relevant experts before submitting your project application to ensure that the requested assistance is available.
Sustainability after the end of EOSC-Life. Projects should have a clear plan for their sustainability beyond the duration of the funding period (e.g.: data/software/project/cloud output management plan). No extended funding beyond the project duration will be available via EOSC-Life and it falls within the applicant's responsibility to plan for long term sustainability of their proposed work.

EOSC-Life strives to represent the broad spectrum of life science communities and to promote gender balance and pan-European research. For proposals that score above the threshold for excellence at both assessment stages, considerations for the final selection of projects will include both the scientific excellence and technical feasibility of each proposal and the balance of scientific domain, geography and gender across all of the awarded projects.

Projects should be expected to run for approximately 12 months and start within 2 months after project acceptance. Independent of this, all project work and reporting must be completed before February 2023 to receive funding. Find details on the reporting plan here. Projects should strive for close cooperation with life science research infrastructures (RIs) (https://www.eosc-life.eu/about/about-european-ris/) and the topic must be of relevance for life science RIs. Applications involving several life science domains are preferred as they help to improve interoperability across scientific disciplines.

In the spirit of Open Science and FAIR data, successful projects are expected to have a lasting impact and provide sustainable outcomes to enable future projects to benefit from their work and re-use their data, tools and workflows. Projects should present novelty for the EOSC, and address important challenges and needs of the biological and biomedical community.
For more information on our assessment processes please see the reviewer guidelines and the technical evaluation guidelines.

Deadline for submissions

The deadline for submissions will be 5pm CEST Wednesday 29 September 2021. Only submissions received in full before this deadline will be considered for acceptance.
Additionally, applicants must have made contact with technical experts before 5pm CEST 28 July 2021 in each of the areas relevant to their application before submission. See “Maturation phase” for more information.

Terms and conditions

By applying to this call you must agree to be bound by the Digital Life Science Call Terms of submission and agree that your personal data can be processed according to the Digital Life Science Call privacy policy.

FAQ

If you have questions regarding the Call and the application process, check our FAQ.
If you don’t find the answers you are looking for, contact opencall@eosc-life.eu to submit your query and we will get back to you as soon as possible.