How to prepare an application to become a recognised CLARIN K-centre
(this info comes from the official form, version 10.3 dd 09-09-2020, as sent to Vincent by Bente Maegaerd)
Application form in Google Doc
Background
One of the building bricks of the CLARIN Knowledge Infrastructure are knowledge centres (abbreviated K-centres). Their role is to provide a place (physical or virtual) where people (both researchers or educators using the infrastructure and those who help building or operating it) can get cross-border access to knowledge and expertise in specific areas. They can be
- single-sited: a group of people in one physical location or institute or distributed: people spread over various locations in one or more countries;
- specialized in one topic (e.g. speech analysis, treebanking, Polish language technology) or
covering a variety of topics with a common denominator (e.g. the languages of Sweden);
- and are expected to offer a mix of proactive and reactive services.
The instruments they use may vary. Knowledge centres may or may not offer technical infrastructure or data services as well and may be located in or outside CLARIN ERIC member or observer countries.
An overview of all existing CLARIN K-centres can be found on [1]
Application process
Institutes that feel that they are sitting on specific knowledge and expertise that could be beneficial for current or future users of the CLARIN infrastructure, and that are willing to share them can submit an application to be recognized as a CLARIN K-centre. Please note that relevant expertise for CLARIN users is not necessarily linguistic in nature): IPR, ethics, machine learning and linked open data are examples of potentially useful expertise for those who work with language.
Applications should make use of the form below and should be sent to k-centre-application@clarin.eu
As a first step applications will be forwarded to the Knowledge Sharing Infrastructure Committee (abbreviated KSIC), which will discuss the application and normally send a first round of feedback to the applicants. This could be questions for clarification, suggestions to improve the application or other comments.
The applicants submit their responses (normally in the form of an update of the application), which will be discussed in the KSIC. Depending on the outcome there may be another iteration between KSIC and applicants, or, if the KSIC is satisfied the application will be forwarded to the CLARIN ERIC Board of Directors (BoD), together with the KSIC’s recommendations. The BoD will decide about the recognition as a K-centre for a period of 3 years. The K-centre will submit annual reports to the BoD on their activities, and after the 3 years period the K-centre and KSIC will discuss the reports and prepare a proposal for a prolongation for another 3 years.
After approval by the BoD the applicants will be notified and they will receive the official K-centre certificate plus, if needed, guidelines for the landing page of the K-centre, as well as guidelines for the annual reports.
Application form
The application form below is a Word template, consisting of four main components:
- Administrative and contact data
- Information about what the K-centre plans to offer to users
- Confirmation of the K-centre’s willingness to comply with a number of requirements
- Information that should help KSIC and BoD to judge the quality and sustainability of the K-centre