CORBEL staff exchanges: Call for Hosts 1/2017

The Call for Hosts is closed.

The purpose of CORBEL staff exchanges

The purpose of CORBEL staff exchanges is for operational staff from the Research Infrastructures participating in CORBEL to develop operational expertise in four areas – data management, service provision, innovation and ethics – by making short knowledge-exchange visits to other Research Infrastructures (RIs) that are noted for their excellence in the same area. The staff exchanges form an integral part of CORBEL’s WP9 tasks.

What does a staff-exchange entail?

Every RI has its strengths and weaknesses. We are asking you to identify the areas of shared interest to CORBEL’s partners – namely user access, data management, ethics and innovation – that your RI excels in, and to submit an application to host a short knowledge-exchange visit (2–5 days) in which key members of personnel from the host RI coach visitors from other participating RIs.
The format of these visits will be relatively informal and is likely to involve no more than a few days of preparation, although we are of course open to more ambitious proposals. 

Suggested format

We anticipate that you will want to begin the visit with a welcoming presentation describing your RI and its activities in the area that you have defined. At this point you might also want to introduce the experts round the table and their involvement in these activities. We will ask your visitors to identify the challenges that they face in your identified topic area when they apply to participate in the staff exchange; they will be asked to present these during the visit. You might wish to time your visit so that it coincides with a staff training course on the area in question, to which you would invite your visitors. We do not regard this as an essential part of a staff-exchange visit, although we are encouraging participating research infrastructures to open up a few places to those from other research infrastructures where this is appropriate. The remainder of the visit is likely to involve small groups of visitors and hosts working together to brainstorm on the visitors’ challenges. Towards the end of the visit you might want to have a round-up session in which the outcomes and next steps are defined.

Closing date and review process for staff exchange proposals

Please email your proposal using the form below to Markus Pasterk by 12:00 midnight GMT on 31 March 2017.
A panel will oversee the review of applications, to ensure an unbiased and transparent review process. Staff exchanges need to be completed and reported on by 31 July 2017.
You will be informed as to whether your organisation has been selected to host a staff exchange by 21 April 2017.

Suggested topics

The following topics are aligned with CORBEL’s highest priority competency requirements and represent the biggest gaps:

  1. Interactions with users and user relationship management related to the CORBEL services and their target user community, including identification of user needs, user experience, user support, user training, customer support practices, problem solving/troubleshooting with users, health and safety for visitors requiring physical access to research infrastructures, and client liability
  2. Sustainability issues, including funding, of planned or existing services
  3. Ethical and legal frameworks underlying specific scientific areas of participating BMS RIs and services
  4. Communication with agencies and ethical boards
  5. Handling of confidential information

Suggested length

2–5 days

Number of participants

For this round, we propose a maximum of 3-5 visiting participants. You may involve as many host participants as you feel appropriate.

Reimbursement

CORBEL (via BBMRI-ERIC) will cover subsistence costs for visitors; as partners in the CORBEL project you may also charge additional staff time to your own CORBEL budget allocation to organise and deliver the programme. The visiting delegation is expected to cover its own travel and accommodation cost as a demonstration of commitment to the staff exchange. Claims need to be made within BBMRI-ERIC policy (see below) and shall not exceed €2000.  

Important information from BBMRI-ERIC expenses policy
- Expenses should be submitted as soon as possible after they have been incurred, with an
  expectation that they will be submitted within three months.
- Expenses submitted more than six months after they have been incurred will be rejected.
- The original receipts must be submitted for all claims.
- A record of the number of attendees and the organisation(s) they represent must be kept and
  included with the claim

Application

The application to host a CORBEL staff exchange can be downloaded here.