Consulting

The following schematic workflow aims to aid the dynamic nature of the project initiation phase as well as its inherent complexity by supporting its individual steps with quick and clear chains of communication.

 

First point of contact: Central Office

The first point of contact for a project initiation is the Central Office via the email address acdh-ch-helpdesk(at)oeaw.ac.at. If you have already spoken to a member of the ACDH-CH about your project, said colleague will inform the Central Office about the project.

 

ACDH-CH contact person and their responsibilities

In the second step, the Central Office will establish contact to a member of the ACDH-CH. This member will act as main link to the ACDH-CH during the joint proposal stage and will take over the following responsibilities:

  • The member of the ACDH-CH will act as contact person for all concerns regarding the project proposal and will communicate all relevant decisions about the possible cooperation of the ACDH-CH as soon as possible (see Decision Phase below).
  • Our contact person will work in close connection with our project partner in the conception of those project parts that directly relate to aspects of DH or to matters of technological infrastructure. The contact person will devote special care to the formulation of the respective proposal texts.
  • In constant exchange with both the cooperation partner and the ACDH-CH directors, the contact person will aid in drafting the personnel and financial resource plan pertaining to the workload of the ACDH-CH during the project phase.
  • Our contact person will establish relevant channels for communication, documentation and short-term data storage (usually MS Teams) during the consulting phase.

 

Time table: corner stones of our consulting

  • Decision phase: as soon as all basic information (see below) has been submitted during the consulting phase, the contact person informs the Board of Directors via the Central Office to decide if the project proposal will be pursued further by the ACDH-CH. The basic information should be submitted three weeks before the submission deadline the latest.
  • Grant Service: After a draft-version of the proposal has been agreed upon by the project partners and the ACDH-CH Board of Directors, the necessary documents will be sent to the Grant Service, which forwards the proposal to the review cycle. The submission will be carried out by the main applicant from the Academy (meaning the submission will be carried out by the ACDH-CH in case of external partner institutes). The Grant Service requires at least 14 days of lead time for the review cycle. The contact person will inform the project partner of the result of the internal review cycle, possible formal adaptions to the proposal, or the procedure of collecting necessary signatures.

 

Required basic information/key data

To deliver a sound evaluation of the feasibility and resource requirements of a project as early as possible, the ACDH-CH teams requires the following basic information, which should be clarified as early as possible in the project initiation phase:

  • project framework: call/funding Institution, project partners/contact persons, planned duration
  • content: exposé/draft, thematic orientation
  • budget: total budget and targeted share allocated to the ACDH-CH
  • prospective role and tasks of the ACDH-CH (including a rough estimate of the workload)
  • legal aspects (especially issues of copyright)
  • prospective technological realization of the project
    although concrete technological solutions are usually only made explicit fairly late in the process, a rough plan of which technologies will be used should be supplied, as well as concept for technical support and running time of IT-services after the end of the project.

 

General aspects to be considered in a project proposal

In the collaborative conception of the project proposal, the following aspects relevant to the cooperation need to be considered especially careful:

  • legal aspects: the handling of personal data needs to conform to the GDPR, observation of copyright at all times as well as orientation on the general open-access-strategy of the ACDH-CH. Our legal issues project survey (ALPS) offers assistance in such matters.
  • licensing and all its implications (especially concerning the use of data, tools and code stemming from the project)
  • agreement on the necessary technological infrastructure that the ACDH-CH will offer in the framework of the project
  • handling and maintenance of the applications, software and data after the project’s runtime
  • consistent working, data management, and budget plans (also applies for internal cooperations)

 

Financial framework of a cooperation with the ACDH-CH

The ACDH-CH is continuously supporting researchers (at the Academy) with a variety of services, which mainly consist of disseminating specialized knowledge and skills (Helpdesk, Consulting, lectures, workshops etc.) and a broad range of data-oriented efforts. In the spirit of cost-pricing and transparency, all services which go beyond the basic infrastructure have to be calculated separately, and individual projects have to account for the cost of the services of the ACDH-CH in their budget. These concrete costs need to be clarified during the planning stage and depend on the nature of the cooperation and the technologies used. Please do not forget to account for things such as data curation, archiving, customization of services to the needs of a project, development and long-term maintenance of new tools and applications and the likes.