Rules for holding ERCOFTAC events:

ERCOFTAC has a strong tradition in stimulating science-based engineering, both in research and education. Bringing in understanding for specific themes from an industrial perspective can enrich the workshop and summer school programs.

We would like to stimulate interactions between academia and industry and ask you as organizer to actively consider whether in your planned activity there are opportunities to strengthen the application perspective and actively incorporate industrial aspects.

Conditions for a ERCOFTAC event: Workshop, Summer School*, Conference, Course

Specific aspects you may wish to consider when organising your workshop and summer school are to:

  • invite industry participants**
  • invite industry speakers/lecturers
  • address industry relevant questions
  • make results available to interested industry

Also certain conditions must be observed:

  • The proposals should emphasise 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).
** ERCOFTAC can help you with addresses of potentially interested colleagues from industry.

Submission and approval process

  • The Scientific Programme Committee (SPC) 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 Central Administration & Development Office (CADO) 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 SPC will recommend to the Managing Board (MB) its approval. So the procedure required to obtain approval should not take more than three months.

Please note all reports submissions and requests for funding must be organised in MS Word.

Requirements after funding approval

Publicity requirements

  • ERCOFTAC website: one picture of the location or any picture connected with the event together with a short text as a general introduction. It should happen within one month after the grant was agreed. The materials can be delivered to CADO or to SIG Coordinators.
  • Each event should be announced to ERCOFTAC members by a special email prepared by the organisers.
  • Also the organisers must ensure adequate publicity in the ERCOFTAC Bulletin and in ERCOFTAC Quarterly Newsletter. In any other publicity sponsorship or co-sponsorship by ERCOFTAC should be prominently mentioned. CADO and Pilot Centres will assist in the publicity. The event 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 CADO.

 

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.
  • 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 on the order of 30% for meetings organised by ERCOFTAC alone and on the order of 10% for meetings where ERCOFTAC is a co-organiser.
  • The organisers of the 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, see below.
  • The maximum total assistance from ERCOFTAC funding for a workshop or conference is about 2,000 Euro and for a summer school or course 3,000 Euro. In some cases (additional) funding is provided through ERCOFTAC participation in EC and other schemes.


Reimbursement of scholarships

The payment of the scholarships will be settled after the event. The organisers of the event should write to ERCOFTAC CADO within 6 months after the event took place, to obtain the funds.

CADO requires submission of the following reports:

  • a detailed report of the meeting for the SPC, which also will be published in the ERCOFTAC Bulletin. It is advised to include some photos documenting the event. Also it is recommended that scientific data (experimental or numerical) created for the activity should be included in the database activities, or explained how to access these data. Guidelines for submitting material to the ERCOFTAC Bulletin are available here;
  • a financial overview, indicating how the ERCOFTAC grant has been spent.  It is necessary to provide the names and email addresses of those who will receive the funds; 
  • a final budget confirming the necessity of using the funding; 
  • an invoice, mentioning the title, location and date of the event, as well as the necessary bank details, and attachment of scanned receipts pertaining to all participants that require reimbursement;

After receiving the above the scholarships will be transferred to the organiser's bank account.

It should be stressed 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.

Publication of proceedings

If an ERCOFTAC workshop and summer school involves the preparation and presentation of conference-like papers or extended summaries, the organiser should give serious consideration to the possibility of compiling contributed papers in a manner that allows their publication along one the two following routes.

  1. ERCOFTAC Book Series. This route would apply if the large majority (or all) of the contributed papers are to be issued in the form of a single volume specifically associated with the meeting. The ERCOFTAC Book Series is published by Springer, which is ERCOFTAC’s preferred partner for the publication of proceedings. The Series has been in existence for over 20 years. Special rates have been negotiated to keep publication costs low. The Book Series is indexed in Scopus to guarantee maximum visibility.

To discuss this option, you are strongly encouraged to contact Prof. Maria Vittoria Salvetti, mv.salvetti@ing.unipi.it, who acts as a contact between ERCOFTAC’s SPC and Springer, and Mrs. Nathalie Jacobs, Nathalie.Jacobs@springer.com of Springer, who will be able to answer any questions about the publication process.

      2.  FTaC (Flow, Turbulence and Combustion) Journal. This route would apply if a selection of around 10-15 highest- 
           quality papers presented at the meeting are considered for a Special Issue of the Journal. In this case all selected 
           undergo a peer-review process identical to that of standard papers contributed to the journal.

FTaC is a premier platform for presenting innovative research in the field of single-phase, multi-phase and reacting flows, and ERCOFTAC maintains close links to this journal, which occasionally publishes special issues arising from relevant international conferences, such as ETMM, TSFP and THMT. If you believe this could apply to your event then please step forward with your ideas by contacting the Editor-in-Chief, Prof. Michael Leschziner at mike.leschziner@imperial.ac.uk, referring to the ERCOFTAC funded activity that you organise.

Rules for holding an ERCOFTAC event can be downloaded below:

event_rules.pdf

For additional questions, please contact  CADO.