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Rules for holding ERCOFTAC events

Conditions for a ERCOFTAC event

If organisers of conferences, workshops and summer schools wish these to be primarily ERCOFTAC meetings or to be held in association with ERCOFTAC, certain conditions must be observed:

  • The proposals should emphasize the special ERCOFTAC features of the meeting, in addition to those usually found at conferences; for example they may involve dissemination of recent research, instruction in advanced topics, comparison of test cases, computer demonstrations of codes, discussions of new plans for collaborative research and improvement of codes, planning new experiments for comparison with computation, displays of work by SIG's (examples of such special features appear in ERCOFTAC Bulletin).
  • The meeting must be genuinely European, not just a national meeting.
  • There must be leading speakers/or organisers from two or more European countries.
  • Summer schools should follow the rules as set up by the EC/TMR programme (training element, 1-2 weeks international expert teachers).

Submission and approval process

The Scientific Programme Committee must be informed about the details of the meeting and permission must be obtained before the meeting is advertised as being connected with ERCOFTAC.

Proposals must be sent to the ERCOFTAC Coordination Centre at least 2 weeks before the next SPC meeting, after which the proposal will not be considered at the meeting. Ideally, they should be submitted 1 year before the event.

Generally the Scientific Programme Committee will recommend to the Managing Board its approval. So the procedure required to obtain approval should not take more than three months.

Other requirements

Publicity requirements

Once approval is given, the organisers must ensure adequate publicity in the ERCOFTAC Bulletin. In any other publicity sponsorship or co-sponsorship by ERCOFTAC should be prominently mentioned. The Coordination Centre and Pilot Centres will assist in the publicity. The organisers in return are obliged to make available ERCOFTAC documentation material to the participants in the activity. This documentation material can be obtained free of charge from the Coordination Centre.

Production of a Meeting Report

After the meeting, the organisers must write a detailed report of the meeting for the Scientific Programme Committee, which also will be published in the ERCOFTAC Bulletin.

There should also be a financial statement accounting for the support of ERCOFTAC, including the names of those who obtained scholarships (these names will not be published).

It is recommended that scientific data (experimental or numerical) created for the activity should be included in the database activities, or that in the meeting report it is explained how to access these data.

Attendance fees and costs

It would be desirable to settle on the fees and costs reasonably soon, so that participants can budget for their attendance. (There are no rules in this respect, though it is to be hoped that the costs for attending are not so high as to preclude the attendance of students).

It is required that a reduced fee is charged to those attending from institutions or groups that are members of ERCOFTAC. This reduction should be in the order of 30% for meetings organised by ERCOFTAC alone and in the order of 10% for meetings where ERCOFTAC is a co-organiser. The ERCOFTAC membership list can be obtained from the Administration and Development (A&D) Office in Brussels.

The organisers of these meetings can also request from the SPC that ERCOFTAC contributes towards the cost of "scholarships" for junior scientists and engineers wishing to attend. For more information on how to be reimbursed for scholarships, click here.

The maximum total assistance from ERCOFTAC funding for a workshop or conference is about 2000 Euro and for a summer school or course about 3000 Euro. (In some cases (additional) funding is provided through ERCOFTAC participation in EC and other schemes).

Reimbursement of scholarships

With regard to the reimbursement for scholarships, the organisers of the event should write to the ERCOFTAC Administration/Development Office (ADO) in Brussels to obtain the funds.

The payment of the scholarships will be settled after the event). The ADO requires from the organisers, after the event has taken place, to submit a report to the Coordination Centre in Lausanne including:

  • a financial overview, mentioning how the ERCOFTAC grant has been spent.  It is necessary to provide the names of those who will receive the funds;
  • an invoice, mentioning the title, location and date of the event, as well as the necessary bank details;
  • the report on the conference/summerschool/workshop.

As soon as the Administration/Development Office receives all the necessary information, the scholarships will be transferred to the organiser's bank account.

It should be stressed once more that the funds cannot be used to cover the expenses of invited lecturers. ERCOFTAC scholarships are to be used to enable (young) scientists to attend the sponsored meetings.

Note: Claims for scholarships can only be made during a period of 6-months, starting from the beginning of the event, after which requests will no longer be considered.

Documents and contacts

Applications forms can be downloaded here:

Rules for holding an ERCOFTAC event can be downloaded in PDF.

For additional questions, you can contact Prof. M. LESCHZINER or Prof. Ch. HIRSCH.