RDA Europe is offering up to seven grants of maximum €1750 to Early Career European Researchers & Scientists working with data to attend the 12th RDA Plenary meeting, 5-8 November, Gaborone, Botswana.
Interested candidates are invited to fill in the application form, linked below, in order to apply for the programme. Please review the details below before you apply. The successful applicants will be offered financial support to participate in the 12th RDA Plenary and will be:

• Required to display a poster summarising their studies and areas of interest during the plenary meeting;
• Assigned to a working group and expected to attend group meetings;
• Asked to take notes and provide a summary of the working group’s meeting for internal use by the group members;
• Required to write a publishable summary about the 12th RDA Plenary meeting to be posted as a blog / news piece on the RDA website, referencing the applicant as the author directly.

The applicants should satisfy the following criteria:

• Currently engaged in Bachelor, Masters, PhD or Postdoc studies
• Study is conducted in a higher education or research institution based in Europe;
• Studies are of relevance to RDA Recommendations or Outputs and cover at least one of the Working or Interest Groups.

Further criteria and conditions:

• Previous Early Career programme winners should not re-apply.
• It is not possible to apply for both the Early Career support programme and the Expert support programme in the same round.
• RDA Ambassadors are not eligible for the Early Career support programme.
• Members of RDA governance bodies (TAB, OAB, Council & Secretariat) are not eligible for the Early Career support programme.
• RDA Europe 4.0 project partners are not eligible for the Early Career support programme. This exclusion refers to staff of the five project beneficiaries working directly on RDA Europe 4.0, not other staff of these institutions or members of the consortium who act as RDA Europe nodes.

Applications will be evaluated by a group of external expert evaluators, according to the following criteria:

• Area of interest (as broad a coverage of RDA Working or Interest Groups as possible); an understanding of the European Data Infrastructures landscape, including initiatives such as the European Open Science Cloud; the FAIR data movement; knowledge of the Open Science agenda, and how these intend to evolve in Europe is a plus;
• Relevance of their work to RDA activities (as indicated by answers to questions on benefits to the applicant and future involvement in RDA);
• Linguistic skills (good knowledge of English will be required to generate content);
• Evaluation will also consider the following criteria to establish balanced and diverse participation and distribution of grants:
• Geographical balance
• Gender balance
• Preference given to candidates who have not already previously received RDA funding
• Preference given to candidates in underrepresented fields within RDA

The Early Career support programme will offer up to seven grants of maximum €1750 to support participation at this Plenary Meeting.
What costs can be reimbursed?
For reimbursement of ECR grants, the University of Göttingen cost accounting practices apply. The following costs are eligible:

• Flights, trains and public transport to and from the conference venue (Economy fares only)
• Maximum five nights accommodation in Gaborone, Botswana
• Hotel costs are reimbursed up to €102 per night (excluding breakfast)
• Conference fee (registration for International Data Week)
• Costs for Licensed Taxis are eligible if public transport is not available
• No daily allowance

Maximum total costs reimbursed will be €1750.
How will costs be reimbursed?
Successful applicants will need to complete the form for ‘Travel expense reimbursement of invited/dispatched staff members’ from the University of Göttingen, and attach original receipts. This must be submitted to the University of Göttingen within 30 days after travel.
Contact: Dr. Daniel Bangert

Interested candidates are invited to complete the online application form by 30th August 2018, 17:00 CEST. All candidates will be notified of the outcome of their application on the 21st September 2018.

Please use the form linked below to submit your application. If you cannot see the form, please login / register.