The full PDF-text of the call can be downloaded here.
Launch
Launch
CLARIAH-CORE launches a call for proposals for research pilots. This call is open from Monday September 5, 2016. The total budget for this call is limited to a maximum of € 700,000. A typical budget per project is € 60,000. A higher budget is exceptionally possible (up to € 100,000), but requires specific justification.
The CLARIAH-CORE project designs, constructs and exploits the Netherlands parts of the European CLARIN and DARIAH research infrastructures. It has filled this research infrastructure with a wide variety of CLARIAH components, which include generic infrastructure services, data such as databases, textual resources and audio-visual resources, and software applications and services that can be applied to these data for searching, analysis, enrichment, conversion, combining, visualization and other purposes.
See here for an indicative list of CLARIAH components.
The aim of the research pilots is to test aspects of the infrastructure and generate suggestions for improvements, as much as to answer the substantive research questions. Research pilots therefore entail the cooperation of the groups and institutes that have built or make available the relevant part of the infrastructure.
CLARIAH-CORE has linguistics, social economic history and media studies as its core disciplines, but applications for research pilots from other disciplines in the humanities are strongly encouraged.
What
What is a Research Pilot?
A CLARIAH research pilot is a small project in which the CLARIAH infrastructure or particular components of it are tested by carrying out small research activities. A CLARIAH research pilot starts with one or a small number of research questions. These research questions must be operationalized in terms of desired actions (e.g. searching, analysing, enriching, converting, combining, etc.) informally formulated in the proposal in natural language. It must be specified which specific components (software tools, applications, datasets, etc.) will be used to attempt the desired actions and it must be made clear that these components are in principle appropriate to carry out the desired actions. The team that develops and maintains the relevant functionality or dataset is ideally involved in the project. Data curation can be part of the project if the research questions demand so.
In the project the desired actions are formulated precisely in term of the language and vocabularies supported by the relevant tools and datasets. It is possible and very likely that not all desired actions can be formulated exactly as desired. This should be carefully documented, and an attempt should be made to formulate the functionality that will make the desired action possible.
Ideally, the development team takes in the problems encountered, makes a specification of the necessary extensions and adaptations and implements these. After this, the original actions are carried out again and it is reported whether and/or to what extent the desired actions are possible now.
Intermediate and final results of the project are publicized widely, and the intended target users are involved in the results by means of workshops and tutorials.
Output
What is the output of a researchpilot?
The output of a CLARIAH research pilot is:
- A document that describes
- the research question(s)
- the CLARIAH components used,
- the operationalisation of the research question(s) in terms of actions formulated using the vocabulary/languages of specific CLARIAH components used
- the successes and problems encountered when applying these actions
- the desired new or adapted functionality (if applicable)
- A document that describes the specification of the desired changes
- An updated or upgraded version of the relevant CLARIAH component with adapted documentation
- A document that describes the results of the actions when applied with the updated/upgraded CLARIAH components
- An article intended for publication in an academic journal that describes the results of the research carried out. It must be submitted to an appropriate academic journal. Ideally the article is actually published in an academic journal, but it will any way be made public on the CLARIAH website.
Team
Composition of the team
The team of a CLARIAH research pilot consists of 3 partners:
- The first partner and principal investigator is a humanities researcher who formulates the research question(s) and carries out the research
- The second partner is the team or teams that developed and maintain the relevant CLARIAH component(s). The principle investigator determines in close cooperation with the development team(s) how to best operationalize the research question(s).
- The third partner is a representative or a small team from the centre where the relevant
CLARIAH component is stored or is running.
The humanities researcher cannot be a member of the CLARIAH component developer team. The development team and centre team are allowed to coincide or overlap.
Evaluation
Evaluation Criteria
A proposal must describe a project that is compatible with the requirements described in this call; in particular, it must be a research pilot as described in this document.
Proposals for projects will furthermore be evaluated and ranked according to the following more general criteria:
- Quality and Feasibility
- Clarity and added value of the project proposal, in particular of the research question(s), the CLARIAH components to be used, and the initial informal operationalization of the research question(s).
- Suitability of the method and plan for the problem at hand.
- Feasibility of the project targets: can they be realized within the specified amount of time and with the instruments proposed?
- Adequate balance between requested instruments and funds and proposed targets.
- Clearly specified and realistic work plan.
- The proposal must describe in detail which data are needed for the research, whether these data are available and accessible, and whether they can be used directly or require curation before they can be used.
- Conformance to established standards and protocols as supported within CLARIN, DARIAH, or CLARIAH or contribute to the development of such standards and protocols.
- Project Participants
- Competence of the participating partners (including their past performance).
- Balanced cooperation and task assignments within the project.
- Justification of the composition of the team.
- Availability of the infrastructure required for the project to be successful.
- User-orientation of the project
- Does the project address needs of the targeted infrastructure users (humanities researchers)?
- More generic data or functionality, i.e. data or functionality that can serve multiple different research questions from the humanities will be preferred over less generic or completely idiosyncratic functionality.
- Is there cooperation with or support from the targeted (future) infrastructure users?
- Is the resulting updated tool / service user-friendly, i.e. will non-technical humanities researchers be able to use it?
- Contribution to CLARIAH as a whole
- The project must focus on one or more components of the CLARIAH infrastructure.
A list of these components is available on the CLARIAH website.
- The project must focus on one or more components of the CLARIAH infrastructure.
- Intellectual Property Rights and Synergy
- Each proposal must contain clear statements about the situation of the IPR of the data and tools/technologies used, and a detailed plan to resolve any open issues before the start of the project.
- The project participants have the obligation and must therefore have the rights to incorporate any new or updated data and tools used in a project into the infrastructure (this is a sine qua non). There has to be a clear specification and justification of the use of any data or tools needed in the project that cannot be incorporated into the infrastructure.
- Formal compliance
- A proposal must meet the formal requirements imposed by the CLARIAH-CORE project for proposals, such as:
- conformance to the prescribed format and proposal template
- submission before the set deadline, using the means prescribed
- conformance to the prescribed language of the proposal
- A proposal must meet the formal requirements imposed by the CLARIAH-CORE project for proposals, such as:
Duration
Duration
The duration of the project must be justified. The maximum duration is 12 months.
Projects must be carried out between March 1, 2017 and June 30, 2018.
Budget
Budget
The project budget must be in accordance with the tasks to be carried out, and this must be justified in the project proposal. The typical budget is €60,000 and the maximally allowed budget, provided specific justification is given, is €100,000
IPR
Intellectual Property Rights
An agreement must be in place between the owners of the original data and software and the project participants on the IPR of the adapted data and software before the submission date of a proposal if the owners of the original data and software are not identical to the project participants. If applicable, a copy of this agreement must be uploaded together with the project proposal. Otherwise ownership of the created adaptations and extensions will be with the creator(s).
The project participants have the obligation and therefore must have the rights to make available the results of the project (e.g. any new data or software, updated CLARIAH components, etc.) in the infrastructure for use by researchers having access to it. This is a sine qua non. Any proposal not satisfying this requirement or being insufficiently clear about this matter will be considered to be formally noncompliant and will be rejected on these grounds.
The project proposal should describe all issues related to IPR and present solutions for them. The relations between the partners in a project must be agreed upon in a consortium agreement before the start of the project.
Practical Details
Practical details
On the submission and evaluation procedure regarding the CLARIAH Call for Research Pilots
Call for Proposals
The CLARIAH Call for Research Pilots is open from Monday September 5, 2016. The total budget for this call is limited to a maximum of € 700,000. This call is specifically open for proposals for CLARIAH research pilots. Only those proposals that specifically target this priority will be eligible.
Full proposals must be submitted in English and in PDF format to the CLARIAH electronic proposal submission system using the prescribed template (which can be found here on the CLARIAH website). The deadline for submitting full proposals in this call has been set for Monday November 7, 2016 13:00 hours CET.
The CLARIAH electronic proposal submission system can be accessed as of Monday September 5, 2016 via the submission page of CLARIAH website.
If the electronic proposal submission system would not work, contact the CLARIAH Office.
Who can apply?
Applications can be submitted only by researchers from organisations that are eligible for NWO-funding. The principal investigator of the project must be a researcher from the humanities.
CLARIAH-CORE has linguistics, social economic history and media studies as its core disciplines, but applications for research pilots from other disciplines in the humanities are strongly encouraged.
Applicants who are planning to submit a proposal are strongly advised to contact the CLARIAH Office for an eligibility check of their plans, or for assistance in finding suitable partners.
Eligible costs
- Personnel costs directly related to the project, in accordance with the Akkoord NWO-VSNU 2008 (and any additions to it). For amounts that are applicable, see here and more specifically the following document: Berekening vergoeding met salarispeil 01-07-2016
- Material Costs
- Costs for non-standard equipment, hired services, etc.
- A fee of maximally €3.000 per FTE per year (or a pro rata part for less than 1 FTE per year) for covering travel and subsistence costs
- Special justification is required if the requested funding exceeds €60,000.
- The requested funding cannot exceed €100,000
Evaluation procedure full proposals
Each eligible proposal submitted in this call will be evaluated against the evaluation criteria of this proposal by at least two independent experts. The evaluators may formulate questions or remarks directed at the project proposers. The project proposers will get the opportunity to answer these questions and comment on the remarks. The response must have been received by the CLARIAH office before the deadline set for it (one will typically have about a week to make the response). An ad-hoc evaluation committee consisting of independent national and international experts will rank the proposals based on the evaluations by the experts and the project proposers’ response and will advise the CLARIAH Board. The CLARIAH Board will make the final decision, based on the recommendations of the evaluation committee. The CLARIAH Board may formulate a set of recommendations for improving the individual proposals and require resubmission of an adapted proposal before it is approved.
The principal investigator of each project will receive a message on the final decision. Projects should start within three months after the applicant has received the formal notification of funding and must be carried out between March 1, 2017 and June 30, 2018.
Timetable
Date | Activity |
Monday July 4, 2016 | CLARIAH Call pre-announced |
Monday September 5, 2016 | CLARIAH Call Open |
Thursday September 22, 2016 (16-18 hour) | CLARIAH Call Information Session |
Monday November 7, 2016 13:00hrs CET | Deadline Proposal Submission |
Monday January 9, 2017 | Feedback / Questions from experts |
Sunday January 15, 2017 | Response to the experts’ feedback /questions |
Monday February 27, 2017 | Decision by the Board |
CLARIAH-CORE
The CLARIAH-CORE project is funded by NWO.
Prof. dr. Lex Heerma van Voss (Huygens ING) is the principal investigator of CLARIAH-CORE and chairs the CLARIAH Board. The project is coordinated by the Programme Director, prof. dr. J.E.J.M. Odijk (Utrecht University), who is a member of the CLARIAH Executive Board.
Annejette Landman is the interim CLARIAH project secretary.
The CLARIAH Board’s composition can be found on the CLARIAH website.
CLARIAH Helpdesk
Contact the CLARIAH Helpdesk for any technical questions related to this call, e.g. questions about specific applications, datasets, technical requirements, etc.:
At the end of this document, one will find a list of acronyms and terms for technical notions with some explanation and references.
Centres
The centres that form the backbone of the infrastructure that is being constructed by CLARIAH-CORE include
- the certified CLARIN centres Meertens Institute, INL/INT, Huygens ING, MPI/TLA
- DANS, IISH and NISV.
CLARIAH Office
Contact the CLARIAH office for any organizational or practical questions related to this call, e.g.
- Additional clarification
- Advice on eligibility of your plans
- Assistance with finding experts, data or technology required
- Assistance with finding project partners
- Assistance with selecting a centre.
- Etc.
The CLARIAH office also offers other forms of help with writing a project proposal. In particular, it is wise to have the CLARIAH office carry out a sanity check on a preliminary version of the proposal, so that evidently ineligible proposals and trivial mistakes in the proposals can be avoided.
Acronyms
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Acronym / Term (URL) | Type | Expansion | Dutch expansion |
CET | Time zone | Central European Time | |
CLARIAH | Infrastructure projects in the Netherlands | Common Lab Infrastructure for the Humanities | |
CLARIAH-CORE | Infrastructure project | Dutch main CLARIAH project | |
CLARIAH-SEED | infrastructure project | CLARIAH Seed Capital project | |
CLARIN | infrastructure | The CLARIN infrastructure | |
DANS | organisation | Data Archiving and Networked Services | |
DARIAH | infrastructure | Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities | |
Huygens ING | organisation | Huygens ING Institute | Huygens ING |
IISH | organisation | International Institute for Social History | Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis |
INL | organisation | Institute for Dutch Lexicology (future INT) | Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie |
INT | organisation | Institute for the Dutch Language (formerly INL) | Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal |
IPR | term | Intellectual Property Rights | |
Meertens Institute | organisation | Meertens Institute | Meertens Institute |
MPI | organisation | Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics | |
NISV | organisation | Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision | Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid |
NWO | organisation | Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research | |
Document format | Portable Document Format | ||
TLA | organisation | The Language Archive | |
VSNU | organisation | Association of Collaborating Dutch Universities | Vereniging van Universiteiten |
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