Our Review Process
ELDP has a detailed and rigorous review and selection procedure ensuring transparency and independence in its decision making. This procedure is based on standard processes of major funding agencies. The selection process of applications is based on the contributions of the ELDP team, an expert panel of academic specialists who broadly represent different geographical areal expertise and expertise in language documentation, the referees nominated by the applicant, and external independent reviewers.
The ELDP panel consists of academics with considerable experience in evaluating research proposals and in language documentation and linguistics (Gabriela Caballero, Harald Hammarström, Birgit Hellwig, Jeff Good, Gary Holton, Stephen C. Levinson,
Yanti Yanti)
Each application is reviewed in the following steps:
1) ELDP establishes that all the required information has been submitted by the deadline and that the project meets the ELDP funding criteria.
2) Potential conflicts of interest for each member of the ELDP expert panel are determined and panel members with potential conflict of interests are excluded from the review process of that particular application.
3) Every application is reviewed by two independent reviewers suggested by the panel and potential conflicts of interest are established and reviewers who do not have a conflict of interest are asked for a review.
4) The panel of experts meets to consider each application and provides a funding recommendation ELDP then communicates to the applicant.
Attention is especially paid to these criteria:
• the degree of endangerment of the language(s) and the urgency of the documentation
• the potential of the project to significantly contribute to language documentation
• the training and preparation of the applicant(s) for the proposed project
• the track record of the applicant in terms of documentation work (deposits available online)
• the goals of the project and whether they can realistically be achieved
• a clear methodology for project work
• a clear justification of equipment in relation to the methodology
• careful consideration of ethical issues
• a clear archiving plan and acknowledgement of ELDP’s open access requirement
• clear evidence of institutional support and super vision support
Only the most urgent projects of highest quality can be recommended for funding by the panel as funding is limited. So even very good applications may fail because other projects are more urgent as no material exist in a language.
Any questions with regard to ELDP applications and/or funding decisions should be directed to the ELDP office directly at eldp@eldp.net and not to the ELDP panel members.