Short Term Scientific Missions

Anyone officially participating in CosmoVerse can apply to STSMs grants but evaluation criteria (described in the dedicated section below) will matter for awarding the grants.

Both the Grantee and the Host must be affiliated to institutions within COST, Cooperating and Partner members countries, as listed in the COST web page.

The Grantee and the Host Institution must be in different countries.

All applicants/grantees must be acquainted with rules and procedures described in the Annotated Rules in Section A2, and more specifically in subsection A2-2.3.

All the written outputs/deliverables derived from the STSM funds must properly acknowledge COST Action CA21136 CosmoVerse funding, as detailed in the COST acknowledgement guidelines. More specifically, the sentence “This article/publication is based upon work from COST Action CA21136 Addressing observational tensions in cosmology with systematics and fundamental physics (CosmoVerse) supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).” in the Acknowledgement section is expected in any follow-up publications.

The STSM must happen within one Grant Period (between 1 November and 31 October the year after).

At the end of the STSM, the Grantee must submit in e-COST the following documents within at the latest 30 days after the end of the STSM, or 15 days after the end of the Grant Period, whichever date comes first:

• Scientific report on the work developed, main achievements of the STSM and planned future follow up activities.
• Host approval of the scientific report.

The maximum grant that can be awarded is €2000 in total. STSM Grants do not necessarily cover all expenses related to undertaking a given mission.

STSM Grantees must make their own arrangements for all provisions related to personal security, health, taxation, social security, and pension matters.

The amount of the grant must be estimated by the applicants after the following criteria:

• The budget can cover a maximum of 6 nights, i.e., funding from 1 day before the start of the STSM to 1 day after the end of the STSM minimum length.
• The daily rate for accommodation, food, and local transport must be calculated based on the official COST table (link also available on the Annotated Rules).
• Long-distance travel expenses must follow general COST rules.

The effective STSM length may be longer than 5 days with the same budget. This is up to the candidate’s budget management.

Grants are processed only after the STSM ends, and after the reporting documents have been uploaded in the system, and if the STSM is approved.

The applicant can apply for a pre-payment of 50% of the Grant. The applicant must keep in mind that the transfer of the 50% of the Grant can only take place after the mission has started and will be decided by the Grant Holder (GH) Institution. When the STSM applicant requests and is granted a pre-payment of 50% of the grant, the STSM host receives a notification requesting her/him to confirm to the GH that the STSM started on schedule. Without the host confirmation, the prepayment cannot be done.

For year 2, there will be two calls:

• The first application is open from 4 December 2023 until 6 January 2024, the selection process will be conducted in January 2024, the decision will be communicated end January, and the STSMs will have to happen in the period February-June 2024.

For year 1, calls for STSM applications were open three times for 1 month:

• The first application was open from 7 December 2022 until 8 January 2023, the selection process was conducted in January 2023, the decision was communicated end January, and the STSMs happened in the period February-June 2023.
• The second application period was open from 15 May 2023 until 11 June 2023, the selection process was conducted in June 2023, the decision was communicated before 10 July 2023, and the STSMs happened in the period 17 July – 30 October 2023.
• The third application period was open between the 7 and 29 August 2023, the decision was communicated by 1 September 2023, and the STSMs took place in the period 28 August – 30 October 2023.

It is the duty of the applicant to choose and contact the Host institution and the organisation of the application process. A Grant Awarding user guide is available.

• Applicants must register for an e-COST profile to be active.
• Applicants must complete the online application form.
• The following compulsory documents must be included in the online application:
  
  • Title; start and end date; budget requested by the applicant; information about the host institution and contact person.
  • STSM application form (template available on e-COST) describing (max 2 pages): Goals, description of the work to be carried out by the applicant, expected outcomes and description of the contribution to the Action MoU objectives.
  • CV (No more than 3 pages – including a list of selected academic publications – if applicable).
  • Letter of support from the home institution (in case of postgraduate students).
  • Written agreement from the Host Institution that the STSM applicant can perform the activities detailed in the STSM work plan on the agreed dates.

The Grant Awarding Committee will be responsible for the selection of the Grantees. The scientific plan of the proposed STSM will be evaluated as for its quality, and connection and relevance to the goals and the topics of CosmoVerse.

Priority will be given in the following ranking order, as per COST Excellence and Inclusiveness Principles:

Postgraduate students and Young Researchers (i.e., < 40 years old) from Inclusiveness Target Countries (ITC)

Postgraduate students and Young Researchers (i.e., < 40 years old) from non-ITC

Senior researchers (i.e., > 40 years old) from ITC

Senior researchers (i.e., > 40 years old) from non-ITC

Gender equality will also be taken into consideration.

Applicants who did not receive an STSM from CosmoVerse will also be prioritised.

STSM & ITC conference grants committee composition:

The committee was formed by:

• 2 permanent members:
  • Grant Coordinator: Vincenzo Salzano;
  • Vice chair: Eleonora Di Valentino. Because of multiple conflicts of interest she has been substituted by a WG leader, Radosław Wojtak.
• 3 non-permanent members for 1 year term, randomly chosen from MC members.

Evaluation criteria

The committee has agreed to follow the scheme below to evaluate and rank the application.

This same scheme will be officially adopted for all future STSM grant calls.

• First shortlist with a “YES” or “NO”: to evaluate if a project generally agrees with the purposes and goals of an STSM and with the main scientific topics of CosmoVerse.
• The STSM projects are divided in three sections:
  • “Goals”
  • “Working plan”
  • “Expected outputs and Contribution to the Action MoU objectives and deliverables”
• For each of the above sections the reviewers assign a score: “0”, “1” or “2”.
• After collecting all evaluations, the Grant Awarding Manager proceeds to average the marks.
• Finally, scores related to the age/ITC criteria (as described in the rules) are given following the scheme:
  • “4”: Master, PhD students and Young Researchers (i.e., < 40 years old) from an ITC;
  • “3”: Master, PhD student and Young Researchers (i.e., < 40 years old) from a non-ITC;
  • “2”: Senior (i.e., > 40 years old) from ITC countries;
  • “1”: Senior (i.e., > 40 years old) from non-ITC countries.
• On the final resulting ranking, the only threshold applied to decide which applications to be funded is the planned STSM budget.

For this second year, the total STSM budget amounts to 23,000€.