The Research Data Alliance is a community-driven organisation whose mission is to build the social and technical infrastructure to enable open sharing of data. As the European plug-in to RDA, the RDA Europe 4.0 project will support growing the community of research data experts and practitioners by offering grants for new RDA Europe national nodes, early career researchers and experts (for plenary support), RDA ambassadors, and RDA output-adoption.

Objectives of RDA Europe 4.0 include becoming a core element in the EU Open Science Strategy and contributing to a global interoperable data infrastructure. To strengthen, consolidate and expand the RDA community in Europe, the project will build on existing networks to create a pan-European network of RDA national nodes. RDA Europe 4.0 and the national nodes will enhance Member State cooperation and contribute to developing a sustainable path for the RDA in Europe.

As part of RDA’s principles of transparent and community-driven action, the project will use external evaluators to support its decision-making processes for the award of RDA Europe grants.

External evaluators will operate remotely via a dedicated web interface and will be responsible for evaluating the applications to cascading grants in response to RDA Europe’s open calls. The project aims to have a pool of up to 30 external evaluators with differing expertise to enable flexibility when assigning applications. Evaluators will be routinely selected from the pool to ensure that no conflict of interest exists in their duties as evaluators. Consequently, evaluators will be asked to sign a non conflict of interest and confidentiality agreement, before being accepted to perform their duties for a specific RDA Europe 4.0 cascading grant evaluation. Performances from external evaluators will be paid using a daily rate of €400, with workload for each evaluation agreed in advance.

• Have a strong demonstrated expertise in an area relevant to RDA’s mission;

• Be actively involved in RDA as a contributor to a Working Group, Interest Group or some other activity, especially in the past 12 to 18 months;

• Active engagement in RDA plenaries, national, and/or regional workshops is desirable;

• Previous experience as an evaluator (e.g. for the European Commission, other funding bodies) is desirable;

• Have a good understanding of the European Commission’s processes and procedures, irrespective of affiliation and nationality;

• Selection of evaluators will include criteria to establish balanced representation:

  • Geographical balance

  • Gender balance

  • Domain expertise balance

• Evaluators should not be RDA Europe 4.0 Governing Board members, nor part of the RDA Europe 4.0 project consortium.

• Individuals from RDA Europe 4.0 project consortium institutions who are not officially assigned to and financially supported by the RDA Europe 4.0 project are eligible to apply.

• Evaluators can apply for RDA Europe 4.0 individual grants; if funded, they will not be asked to evaluate applications of the grant type they hold.

• Evaluators will be asked to sign a non conflict of interest agreement, before being accepted to perform their duties for a specific RDA Europe 4.0 cascading grant evaluation. A conflict of interest exists if an evaluator:
  (a) was involved in any way in the preparation of the proposal or submitted the proposal itself
  (b) stands to benefit directly or indirectly if the proposal is accepted
  (c) has a close family or personal relationship with the applicant or the applicant's organisation
  (d) is a director, trustee or partner or is in any way involved in the management of the applicant's organisation
  (e) is employed or contracted by one of the applicant's organisation or any named subcontractors
  (f) has submitted a proposal for the same domain and in response to the same call
  

• If the evaluator’s institution applies for a node or RDA output-adoption grant, the evaluator should declare their conflict of interest in reviewing the application.

To apply to become an RDA Europe external evaluator, please fill in the application form and attach your CV. Your application form should explicitly address your qualifications, and directly reference the relevant aspects of your CV (i.e. make sure to guide us through your CV). You will receive a notification of receipt of your application. This is a continuous call and will remain open according to the project’s need. Review of initial applications for evaluators will begin in late July 2018.

Please note that evaluations are expected to occur in the following periods.