This is some advice for those of you who are currently preparing a project proposal (others can stop reading here).
- Make sure that you precisely follow the formatting requirements by the DFG as stated in form 54_01_en.pdf:
“Your project description must not exceed 25 pages in total (up to 15 pages for sections 1 through 4 and up to 10 pages as of section 5). The template formatting must be retained. In particular, the font should not be smaller than Arial 11 point, with line spacing no less than 1.2.”
There have been a number of questions regarding these requirements, but they are not debatable. They will be checked by the DFG and I suppose you don’t want to reformat/shorten your proposal after submission. There is also no exception if your project has multiple PIs – the same maximum length.
For those of you who write with LaTeX on Linux (no Arial font), make sure that your font has a similar size as Arial 11pt (in MS Word) and adjust the line spacing accordingly.
Someone from DFG also told me that for the two lists of publications (Sec. 1.2 and Sec. 3) the font size of Arial 9pt is sufficient. - Don’t create a cover page. Start directly with “1 Starting point”. The project title, PI names, abstract, etc. will be entered as meta data in ELAN. Therefore, a cover page is neither necessary nor wanted.
- When you submit the proposal in ELAN, make sure that you go to “New Project” and from there to “Priority Programmes”. There you can start an “Online Form” for a “Proposal for a new project within a Priority Programme”. In the dialogues that follow there will be a drop down menu where you have to choose SPP2377. If you don’t see this drop down menu, you have taken the wrong turn somewhere.
Have a nice week-end,
Olaf Spinczyk
(Coordinator)