Criteria and application procedure

Research teams that include researchers from Danish scientific research institutions have first priority in DanSeis. Nonetheless, employees from any scientific research institution worldwide are in principle eligible to apply, on behalf of their home institution, to rent instruments from the DanSeis infrastructure, in order to conduct scientific research projects.

The rental application consists of two steps:

1) An initial expression of interest, to be made to DanSeis before the research project is submitted to independent research-funding agencies for funding under a peer-review scheme.

2) The official application for rental of instruments, to be made to DanSeis after i) the expression of interest has been dealt with and ii) the research project is awarded the necessary funding by the above-mentioned agency.

Note that a prerequisite for renting DanSeis instruments is that the applicant, if granted access to the infrastructure, arranges for a qualified technician (with documented experience in using the types of instrument applied for) to perform the deployment and recovery of marine instruments, and/or for trained personnel to deploy/recover the land instruments. In either case, the participation of such a technician in handling DanSeis instruments needs to be approved by the DanSeis Steering Committee (DSC). Alternatively, applicants may instead request the services of a DanSeis-technician, against payment of the costs associated with this and provided the availability of DanSeis technical personnel.

Researchers shall contact DanSeis and express their interest in applying for instruments as early as possible. This will allow for a better coordination of instrument requests. Expressions of interest shall contain the following information: type(s) and number of instruments, rental period, location(s) of deployment(s), name of the qualified technician (for marine instruments) or trained personnel (for land instruments) to operate the instruments or request for a DanSeis technician, a summary of the scientific research project where DanSeis instruments are planned to be used (including the composition of the research team), and details of the independent funding agency that shall peer-review the scientific project (including the name of the funding scheme).

The DSC evaluates expressions of interest and subsequent applications on a regular basis at their meetings. Upon receiving expressions of interest, DanSeis can provide a preliminary non-binding response, which may be useful in the grant application for funding of the project from independent research-funding agencies. As a general guideline, the DSC does not perform a scientific review of the applications, since the associated scientific projects are supposed to have been already peer-reviewed (see above).

The DSC evaluates applications by taking into account:

1) The logistics of the project (e.g., location and duration of the project).

2) The type and number of instruments applied for.

3) The level of involvement of employees from Danish scientific research institutions.

In cases where the schedules of projects result in an over-subscription of the available instruments, the committee will try to negotiate schedule changes with the goal of maximizing the use of the instruments. Nonetheless, when negotiations do not lead to viable solutions, the committee reserves the right to take into consideration the scientific objectives of the competing projects.

Research teams that include companies and/or enterprises will go through special considerations of eligibility to apply due to Danish and European regulations.