Our first AQUARIUS training Webinar organised by our colleague Andrea Caburlotto, OGS, focused on the AQUARIUS Transnational Access Platform (TAP).
The AQUARIUS Transnational Access Platform, or TAP, is a customised, user-friendly platform that will manage the AQUARIUS Transnational Access, both physical and remote, in an integrated online access system. The system will handle the applications from Call opening to proposal submission and reporting, covering the whole chain of access provision.
After welcoming the attendees, Andrea handed over to Frank Armstrong, Marine Institute, who briefly introduced the incredible array of research infrastructure available in the AQUARIUS portfolio. Frank highlighted that applicants needed to select the type of access they were seeking, whether it was “physical access” – where users travelled to use the infrastructures on-site or “remote access”, where users did not travel but instead used the infrastructures remotely.
In a slight change to the agenda, Anneli Strobel, AWI, standing in for Lorenza Evangelista, outlined the Call Design and Eligibility Criteria before passing over to Elisabeth De Maio, INKODE, who provided a detailed walkthrough of the TAP. Explaining the various steps involved in the proposal development and submission, Elisabeth noted that a welcome feature is the opportunity to develop applications in stages and revisit them without losing previous work.
Closing the presentations, it was back to Anneli Strobel who reminded applicants of the robust and transparent evaluation procedure, details of which, including the names of the Operational and Scientific Expert Panels can be found on our website here. Visit the TA Calls Page.
Andrea Caburlotto then opened the floor to participants to put their questions to the team in an open Q&A session:
Q: What types of infrastructure are included, e.g., ships?
A: All the infrastructure available can be viewed in our Research Infrastructure Catalogue. There are different categories, including research vessels.
Q: Are ROVs available with the research vessels?
A: There are ROVs available in the catalogue, from Ifremer in France, from HCMR in Greece and from the University of Limerick in Ireland. All costs associated with access to the ROV e.g. transport, salaries and travel & subsistence of the ROV pilots will be covered by AQUARIUS. A research vessel is required to deploy the ROV from so if you don’t have access to one already for your project it must be requested in the AQUARIUS proposal.
Sometimes research vessels may have smaller ROVs available as part of the equipment list and so if you only need a smaller ROV it may be worth contacting the research vessel provider to confirm what is available.
Q: Does the budget also cover lab consumables, services etc. besides travel and logistics?
A: In principle AQUARIUS covers travel costs, shipping of equipment and everything you need to access the infrastructure, and the infrastructure, as such. AQUARIUS cannot buy scientists’ equipment or cover scientists’ salary costs or any other logistics’ costs not directly related to the access. But it also depends on the research infrastructure that you are accessing, for example, if it is a laboratory facility that you are accessing, then this may well all be included in the access conditions.
Please look at the detailed information for each infrastructure in the catalogue to see exactly what is included in the “access” to the infrastructure in question or if in any doubt, please contact the infrastructure provider to clarify. .
Q: Can you explain the different roles of the SEP and the anonymous reviewers?
The SEP ensures the scientific integrity of the process. These are scientific experts, and their names, institutions and areas of expertise are available on our website here. Their role is to oversee the process, and act as a watchdog to ensure the process is transparent and scientifically correct, and that each proposal is treated in the same way.
The SEP will analyse the proposals and allocate scientifically appropriate external anonymous reviewers to review the proposal. The SEP will not review the proposals, this will be done by the anonymous reviewers.