Ship Time

The criteria used for the scientific review are based predominantly on those used by VR for their review of research proposals:
Has the project received research funding from a renown Swedish or other funding body for the research that is being proposed (i.e. has it already been through a scientific review process) (yes; No)

1) Scientific quality of the research (1 – poor, 2 – weak, 3 – Good, 4 – Very good, 5 – excellent)
2) Novelty and originality (1 – poor, 2 – weak, 3 – Good, 4 – Very good, 5 – excellent)
3) Merits of the applicant(s) (1 – poor, 2 – weak, 3 – Good, 4 – Very good, 5 – excellent)
4) Feasibility of research to achieve the scientific objective (1 – not feasible, 2 – partly feasible, 3 – feasible)

The logistics review will be undertaken by the operators of each of the vessel to determine which applications their vessel could support:

– Does your vessel have the required built-in/on-board facilities to undertake the science plan (i.e. sensors, platforms, lab space, berths)
– Does the requested time frame of the voyage fit in with your vessel schedule?
– Can your vessel travel to the requested location?
– Can the vessel store, deploy or support the additional equipment that will be brought onboard by the user?
– If this project can be accepted on your vessel, do you agree it can be carried out within the amount of ship-time requested?
– If this project can be accepted on your vessel, what is the likely number of transit days to the area of interest?
– If this project can be accepted on your vessel, are there other planned voyages that it could be paired with?

This call is for ship-time applications onboard KBV181, Electra, Svea, Ocean Surveyor, and Skagerak. The call for applications for berths on Oden will take place in Feb of the year being applied for.

The Primary Investigator of the proposed research can be a researchers of any nationality, but they must be based at a Swedish university or research organisation. Other participants in the research can be international, but the funding will only be awarded to a researcher living/working in Sweden.

SWERVE strongly encourages applications from Early Career Researchers (ECR). For the sake of our ship-time applications, SWERVE defines an ECR as within 11 years after completion of your PhD.

All disciplines of marine research are supported. This includes not only the more traditional marine disciplines of biology, geology, chemistry, and physics, but also research fields such as marine archaeology, blue economy/growth and biomedicine, for example.

There is no maximum limit to the number of days that an individual project can be awarded, however you should ensure the number of requested days are well-justified by the requirements of the research. For research in areas that require a long transit to the study site, your ship-time application will be considered equally to shorter-transit voyages with regards to scientific review, however vessel capabilities, budgets and schedules may limit the number of long-distances voyages that can be supported.

Each of the SWERVE vessels have different regions of operations. Some vessels also undertake different regional campaigns each year based on their non-SWERVE schedules. Visit the webpage for each vessel to see more information on their upcoming plans. If you are unsure of whether the region you are interested in will be supported, please contact the SWERVE office for guidance.

The vessel schedules are shown here. Some vessels have specific windows of availability based on existing schedules; others will build their schedules based on the research applications received.

Applicants will be asked to indicate their preferred vessels, and to provide justification as to why they made this selection. The Steering Committee for SWERVE will make the final decision on which projects are allocated to which vessels.

Ship time is funded at 50% by VR and 50% by the Partner organisation that owns or operates the infrastructure. Researchers will not receive any funds directly. All funds will be managed between SWERVE and the vessel operators.

Depending on the vessel that you are allocated, there may be other costs associated with your voyage that you will need to cover. 

For ship time which falls under SWERVE 2 (2027-2030) fuel costs are included and are no longer covered by the Principal Investigator.

Regardless, all applicants should have the funding required to analyse the samples or data following the voyage.

This will depend on the vessel that your project is allocated to. You will be asked to indicate a minimum number of people required to undertake your science and we will endeavour to place you on a vessel that can support that minimum number. Where additional berths are available, each vessel operator will make an independent decision on how to fill those berths.

All vessels have ship-based (or built-in) equipment that can be made available to you. Many also have other equipment available for their ship users, or available for use by other Swedish researchers. This equipment will be listed in the application for you to select. If you require equipment that you currently do not have, please indicate this in your application and the SWERVE Office will investigate if that equipment is available from the SWERVE community. In the future, a list of available equipment will be provided on the SWERVE website.

If you have a research plan or idea but require additional expertise or would like to work with other research groups, please contact the SWERVE secretariat. We will communicate to our network and invite collaborators for your application.

The number of ship-days awarded (or number of projects awarded) will be a balance between the budget available and the vessels that are able to support the research that is given the highest scientific ranking. Each vessel has a different day rate therefore it cannot be determined ahead of time how many days on which vessels will be allocated.

SWERVE is a new national infrastructure, and it will take time for the research community, vessel operators and SWERVE management/leadership, to get all procedures and guidelines in place, so we expect that we will get a lot of questions! Please don’t hesitate to contact the SWERVE secretariat if you have any questions that you cannot find the answer to in this document or on the website. Contact Lovisa Thoursie (SWERVE Project Manager; Lovisa.thoursie@gu.se).

Applications with a funding decision pending where results are announced after the SWERVE ship time is awarded, will only be considered for SWERVE ship time if the project is ranked highly and there is spare budget capacity, or if there are no applications with higher priority that fit the vessels availability.