Water4All 2023 Joint Transnational Call “Aquatic Ecosystem Services”

Submission and evaluation procedures are detailed in the Call Announcement available on the Water4All Partnership website (www.water4all-partnership.eu).

Submission Procedures

A two-step application procedure will apply equally for the Joint Transnational Call (JTC) and its modalities. Pre-proposals and full proposals must be submitted electronically via a specifically designed web platform, the Electronic Proposal Submission System (EPSS), using the templates provided. 

Applicants should note that the online system may experience high traffic volumes in the last hours before the submission deadline and it is therefore highly recommended to submit the final version of the pre/full-proposal well in advance of the deadline to avoid any last-minute technical problems. Requests for extensions of the deadline due to last minute technical problems will not be considered.

Evaluation Procedures

A two-step evaluation procedure will apply, for the pre-proposals (step 1) and the full proposals (step 2) respectively. The evaluation procedure will be common for all proposals submitted under the JTC and Early Career Researchers (ECR) modality. The Knowledge Hub modality in the proposals is optional and as such not subject to the evaluation procedure. The Call Secretariat (CS) will check that no Conflict of Interest exists concerning the proposals evaluated.

All proposals, either submitted under the JTC or the ECR modality will be evaluated by the same Evaluation Panel (EP) and in accordance with the same evaluation criteria defined in chapter 5 of the Call Announcement, and ranked in the same ranking list.

An independent observer will be invited as external observer to the EP meetings to assess the conformity of the general procedure with the EU regulation.

Step 1 (Pre-proposal stage)

Pre-proposals submitted correctly and within the deadline will be checked for eligibility by the Call Secretariat against criteria defined in chapter 4 of the Call Announcement and by the Funding Partner Organisations (FPOs) according to their national/regional criteria. 

All eligible pre-proposals should be subject to a scientific evaluation by three EP members, as far as possible, based on two criteria - ‘Excellence’ and ‘Impact’. One of the evaluators will act as the rapporteur during the EP meeting. 

During the EP meeting, the evaluation results of each pre-proposal will be presented by the rapporteur. The EP will discuss the pre-proposals and agree on the final scores for each criterion. All applicants will receive a consensus report from the EP.

A ranking list of pre-proposals will be produced, including only those pre-proposals that meet the minimum threshold, i.e., 3 out of 5 in each criterion. The final score will be agreed by the EP for each criterion, and afterwards, the two criteria will be summed up to produce the final score.

The objective of this first step is to identify the best proposals to proceed to Step 2 and to ensure balance between requested and available funds at the national/regional level. The ranked eligible pre-proposals will be sent to the Call Steering Committee (CSC) and divided in 3 groups, according to their scores: Group A (highest evaluation scores), Group B (medium evaluation scores) and Group C (low evaluation scores). All pre-proposals in Group A, will be invited to Step 2. Among the pre-proposals in Group B, proposals will be selected to Step 2, taking into account the ranking list, the representativeness of all FPOs, the participation in the ECR modality and the funding ratio limits. Pre-proposals in Group C will be dismissed for their low classification. 

Consortium Coordinators will be informed of the outcomes by the CS and, if appropriate, invited to submit a full proposal.

Step 2 (Full proposal stage)

After the submission deadline for full proposals, the submitted full proposals will be checked to ensure that they meet the formal call criteria and have not changed substantially from the respective pre-proposals. Full proposals not meeting the formal conditions will be rejected without further review. 

As in Step 1, each full proposal will be reviewed by three members of the EP based on three criteria - ‘Excellence’, ‘Impact’ and ‘Quality and Efficiency of Implementation’. The EP members will assess the full proposals in advance of the EP meeting and prepare individual evaluation reports. In case of a missing expertise in the EP for some full proposals, the CS will identify and mobilize external experts to obtain three individual evaluation reports. 

The evaluation results for each full proposal will then be presented by the rapporteur during an EP meeting and discussed by the EP members. The EP meeting will complete the evaluation procedure by agreeing on the final individual score for each criterion, and the overall score for each proposal. Due to the large number of proposals evaluated, the EP could decide to focus on those proposals that report divergent scores from the evaluators. Any proposal where there is a consensus between the evaluators on any of the three criteria being below the threshold (i.e., 3 out of 5 in each criterion) may not be discussed and ranked by the EP (regardless if there is divergence or not in other scores). The overall threshold on the final score is 10/15: no project with a lower score will be funded.

The decisions of the EP should be taken collectively, preferably by consensus or by simple majority of the EP members, in case consensus cannot be reached. The rapporteur will produce a common consensus report on behalf of the EP for each full proposal, which will be transmitted to the applicants.

A ranking list of proposals will be produced based on the final scores, following the same methodology as in Step 1. The final ranking list will be forwarded to the CSC, which will meet to decide on the projects to be recommended for funding by FPOs. For this decision, the CSC will strictly follow the order of the ranking list from the EP until the available funding is exhausted.

The applicants will be informed about the final outcome of the call.

Applicants should refer to the details of the Call Announcement, which can be downloaded from the 2023 JTC webpage on the Water4All Partnership website.

The Call Announcement highlights the aim, expected approach and topics of the call. It also details the countries participating in funding the call, the eligibility criteria, submission, evaluation and selection procedures, and modalities for projects funding and reporting.

Specific funding regulations apply depending on the FPOs: each partner applying to the call must ensure that its contribution to the overall project conforms to these regulations, as reported in the document “National/regional regulations” available for download from the Water4All Partnership website.