What to avoid when preparing your preliminary application?

To avoid your application being deemed ineligible, incomplete, or uncompetitive, please carefully review the following common mistakes to avoid when preparing your preliminary application.
 

General Application

• Do not submit unverified or internally unaligned information. Inconsistencies between sections or between consortium partners raise credibility concerns.
   

Research Proposal & Consortium Activities

• Do not submit vague or generic proposals. Proposals must clearly articulate a specific research problem, coherent objectives, sound methodology, and realistic outputs.

• Do not weakly or implicitly link the proposal to SEA DREAM Objectives. Lack of a clear contribution to SEA DREAM’s priorities will significantly weaken the application.

• Do not over-promise outcomes without a credible delivery pathway. Ambitious claims without methodological or institutional justification reduce technical confidence.

• Do not duplicate the same narrative across sections. Each section is assessed for a distinct purpose and repeated content limits the strength of the application.
   

Consortium & Team Composition

• Do not list consortium members without clearly defined and differentiated roles. Each partner must add clear value to the research and consortium activities.

• Do not construct the consortium primarily for geographical representation. Partnerships should be driven by scientific, technical, or capacity needs—not coverage alone.

• Do not include individuals or organisations that have not formally agreed to participate. All listed contributors are assumed to be committed at submission stage.
   

Budget Preparation

• Do not propose budgets that are poorly aligned with activities. Budgets should clearly reflect the scale, complexity, and distribution of proposed work.

• Do not concentrate funding heavily within a single partner without clear justification. Uneven allocations must be clearly linked to roles, responsibilities, and context.

• Do not treat the budget as a financial exercise only. Budget coherence is assessed as part of technical and consortium quality.
   

Eligibility & Compliance

• Do not treat eligibility as a formality. Failure to properly assess consortium-wide eligibility is a common reason for disqualification.

• Do not omit or downplay sanction- or risk-related information. Partial disclosure may result in exclusion at later stages.

• Do not misrepresent organisational capacity or legal status. Any discrepancy identified during due diligence may lead to rejection, even after technical assessment.