Currently in the process of elaborating a grant proposal with another young colleage, we are pondering on how to organise the partnership.
Here’s the deal: we are both in HomeCountry and planning to apply to national funding, so it’s not so big. The funding agency requires the inclusion of international partners, but limits their participation to a small fraction of the final budget (eg no full time staff for them) and they have to provide some of that fraction themselves.
We already have an arrangement with an international partner in another industrialised/north/developed/whatever you want to call it country. But study sites would be in developing/south/whatever you want to call them countries. Remember, international partners wouldn’t be able to hire any staff on this. Colleague’s institution already has many partnerships with the groups we would deal with, that are well-funded.
So we are wondering how to organise this: should we include them as partners, knowing that they will have the burden to have to provide funding themselves, for little to gain; or should we include them as unfunded partners in the project, with us planning for comfortable field work budget to make sure we can provide everything needed on the field for the project, and include them where appropriate in publications?
This is a flaw in the funding programme I guess, but we can't change that, we just have to find the most equitable way to deal with the situation. We actually sent this question to the advisors for the programme... we'll see.
Unrelated to this it seems that I will be coordinator of this project, by default. This is a very daunting prospect; this would be my first collaboration as a PI, and I would have hoped not to have to deal with the hassle of coordination. But I’m starting to think that it will at least give me some authority to kick asses if said asses don’t do what they should, instead of moaning about it. Might need to learn some diplomacy skills here, though.
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Does it do the current collaborators good to have you cover the field expenses? Can people from that lab take part in the field work if they are unfunded collaborators?
Unfunded partners seem to be a better solution, because as you say yourself, it will relieve them from the hassle of getting their own fraction funded. They will still get publications out of it.
But I guess it's worth asking them for their opinion too?
egf: the idea would be to budget their logistic help in our budgets
hg: indeed! My other colleagues knows all these people very well, because they are involved in several other (bigger) networks).
We actually spoke to the funding agency, who said that it was probably easier for everyone to have them as external collaborators, as we thought. This makes a number of things easier, and also means that we can postpone our final study site pick to some extent - some are in sensible areas.
It seems to be taking shape and I have to say that the people in the funding agency are always happy to give advice and answer questions.
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