NeIC Newsflash: Annual Open Call & 2020-2025 Strategy

NeIC, the Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration, was established in 2012 under NordForsk with the joint operation of a high quality and sustainable Nordic Tier-1 service within the Worldwide Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid (WLCG) as the single core activity. Since then, NeIC has grown to encompass a broad range of scientific application areas as areas of collaboration on e-infrastructures. This came about through the implementation of the Nordic eScience Action Plans and from responses to Open Calls for Letters of Interest by national e-infrastructure providers and Nordic research groups with clear e‑infrastructure needs. 

In May 2019, NeIC issued an Open Call ( neic.no/news/​2019/05/23/open-call ): consortia consisting of e-infrastructure providers, developers, researchers and related research communities around the Nordic region were invited to propose collaborations of joint Nordic interest within the area of digital infrastructure. Five project proposals and two pre-study proposals were received. The decision on the pre-studies was made in early September and one pre-study on a Nordic Digital Humanities Laboratory ( neic.no/ndhl ) has started. The project proposals are being reviewed by an independent expert panel. The final decision, based on the resulting suggested ranking, will be made by the NeIC Board at their mid-December meeting, which is likely to lead to one successful project being started in 2020.

One of the criteria for a successful project application is compliance with the NeIC strategy. The vision for NeIC is to be a global role model for cross-border distributed and sustainable e-infrastructure collaborations. NeIC’s renewed strategy for 2020-2025 (see figure below) emphasizes beneficial collaborations, motivated people, efficient processes and Nordic influence. According to this strategy, NeIC activities will centre on digital infrastructure for Nordic research excellence.

The intention is to establish the open call as NeIC's main tool for project creation in the future. A predictable, fine-tuned annual open call process is expected to even out the budget situation over the coming years so that there are not too many projects starting and ending all at the same time. Next year's round is intended to open earlier to make it possible for successful projects to be notified in autumn 2020.

Feedback on the Open Call's scope and improvements for next year's round of calls are welcome: contact us at neic-helpdesk@neic.no  with your suggestions!