In comparison to many other funding organisations, WWTF has a call/jury system to select projects. This means, a certain budget is dedicated to a specific call, which cannot be exceeded even if there are more projects that would be qualified to be funded. The decision about the proposals based on their scientific content is exclusively made by an international expert jury. The jury is composed with the help of WWTF’s boards and members of the call jury are selected specifically with regard to the thematic requirements of the call. Members are highly qualified and renowned experts of the international scientific community. WWTF does not included experts with an Austrian affiliation.
A substantial part of the jury are academics. For calls that include applied areas, also industry researchers may be included in the jury. WWTF puts great emphasis on a high reputation of the jury members. The jury has full authority to assess the application with regard to their scientific content and provide a funding recommendation to the WWTF boards. All applications (full proposals) are reviewed by the international peer, additionally. The reviews support the jury in their decision making process, however, the jury is not tied to the assessments made by individual peers and might overrule their verdict.
