Trustworthy open search and discovery (RIA)

General conditions

1. Admissibility conditions: described in Annex A and Annex E of the Horizon Europe Work Programme General Annexes.

Proposal page limits and layout: described in Part B of the Application Form available in the Submission System.

In this topic, proposals are expected to use financial support to third parties (FSTP). Therefore, they can add an additional annex with information on how they will use it. It should be uploaded in the 'Other Annexes' box. The content of this annex is described in the Part B of the Application Form. This annex does not count for the page limit.

2. Eligible countries: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes.

A number of non-EU/non-Associated Countries that are not automatically eligible for funding have made specific provisions for making funding available for their participants in Horizon Europe projects. See the information in the Horizon Europe Programme Guide.

3. Other eligibility conditions: described in Annex B of the Work Programme General Annexes.

4. Financial and operational capacity and exclusion: described in Annex C of the Work Programme General Annexes.

5. Evaluation and award:

Award criteria, scoring and thresholds are described in Annex D of the Work Programme General Annexes.

Submission and evaluation processes are described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes and the Online Manual.

To ensure a balanced portfolio covering a broad range of research areas and approaches, grants will be awarded to applications not only in order of ranking but at least also to the highest ranking proposal in the first research area, addressing advanced methods of search, and to the highest ranking proposal in the second research area, addressing search infrastructures, provided that the applications attain all thresholds.

Indicative timeline for evaluation and grant agreement: described in Annex F of the Work Programme General Annexes.

6. Legal and financial set-up of the grants: described in Annex G of the Work Programme General Annexes.

Beneficiaries may provide financial support to third parties.
The support to third parties can only be provided in the form of grants.
As the main objective of the action is to support large number of third parties through open calls, the maximum amount to be granted to each third party is EUR 500 000 to allow cases were a given legal entity (e.g. large research, academic or industrial organisations) may receive several grants (e.g. from different calls).

Specific conditions

7. Specific conditions: described in the specific topic of the Work Programme.

Documents

Call documents:

Standard application form (HE RIA, IA) — call-specific application form is available in the Submission System

Standard evaluation form (HE RIA, IA) — will be used with the necessary adaptations

HE General MGA v1.0 — MGA

Additional documents:

HE Main Work Programme 2021–2022 – 1. General Introduction

HE Main Work Programme 2021–2022 – 7. Digital, Industry and Space

HE Main Work Programme 2021–2022 – 13. General Annexes

HE Programme Guide

EU Financial Regulation

Rules for Legal Entity Validation, LEAR Appointment and Financial Capacity Assessment

EU Grants AGA — Annotated Model Grant Agreement

Funding & Tenders Portal Online Manual

Funding & Tenders Portal Terms and Conditions

Funding & Tenders Portal Privacy Statement

Proposal results are expected to contribute to the following expected outcomes:

• Empowered citizens and companies able to search and discover information, data, smart objects, resources and people online, with increased security, accuracy, diversity and transparency in search results while preserving the privacy of the end-users.
• Increased European competitiveness and sovereignty in future search and discovery systems with a strong focus on serving end-users’ needs (including privacy), providing trustworthy and pluralistic recommendations and increasing public trust in search results.
• A European ecosystem of top internet and social media innovators, with the capacity to set the course of the Internet evolution and the search ecosystem according to a human-centric approach.
• New business and sustainability models based on improved access to online data, smart objects and resources and on open source.

The objective of this topic is to develop technologies and solutions enabling new and trustworthy ways of searching and discovering information on the internet across a variety of resources such as personal, scientific, industrial and environmental data, connected devices and smart objects, services, multimedia content, intranets and other IT resources, both public and private. It is also to empower end-users, including through agents acting on their behalf, to share and discover more data and reliable information sources, while preserving their privacy and increasing public trust in search results.

Proposals should focus on advancing the state-of-the-art in one of the two research areas below:

1. Advanced methods of search and discovery such as voice-based search or cognitive search combining technologies for natural language processing, semantic analysis, AI-based taxonomies, network analysis, social computing and data visualisation, enabling new ways of discovering and accessing information, in an energy-efficient way.
   Proposals under this research area will support third party projects from outstanding open source innovators, academic research groups, high-tech startups, SMEs, social innovators, and other multidisciplinary actors, so that multiple actors are funded and collectively contribute to building a more open, trustworthy and user-centric search and discovery ecosystem. As the primary purpose of this research area is to support and mobilise internet and social media innovators, a minimum of 80% of the total requested EU contribution should be allocated to financial support to third parties, selected through open calls. Beneficiaries should make explicit the intervention logic for the area, their capacity to attract internet talents, to deliver value-added services to the third-party projects, as well as their expertise and capacity in managing the full life-cycle of the open calls transparently and efficiently (a minimum of five open calls during the lifetime of the project). They should explore synergies with other research and innovation actions, supported at regional, national or European level, to increase the overall impact.
2. Improving search and discovery infrastructures, with a view to increasing European sovereignty in future search, discovery and recommendation systems. Projects could notably design and pilot distributed search infrastructures, with a strong focus on sustainability, security, reliability, interoperability and trust.
   Proposals under this research area will incorporate third party contributions from outstanding open source innovators, academic research groups, high-tech startups, SMEs, and other multidisciplinary actors. A minimum of 15% of the total requested EU contribution should be allocated to financial support to third parties, selected through open calls.

Proposals should clearly identify the research area they are addressing.

The projects should support open source software and open hardware design, open access to data, standardisation activities, as well as an IPR regime ensuring lasting impact and reusability of results. The focus of this topic is on advanced research; apps and services that innovate without a research component are not covered by this topic. A scientific understanding of collective intelligence methodologies will be important to innovate beyond the current state of the art in search and recommendation systems and contribute to a better governance of social networks.

This topic contributes to the Media Action Plan (MAP), which aims to support the digital transformation of, and collaboration within, the social media industry.

Financial support to third parties

The consortium should provide the programme logic for the third-party projects, ensure the coherence and coordination of these projects, and provide the necessary technical support, as well as coaching and mentoring, in order to ensure that the collection of third party projects contributes to a significant advancement and impact in the research and innovation domain, including in terms of standardisation. These tasks cannot be implemented using the budget earmarked for the financial support to third parties.

The Commission considers that proposals with an overall duration of typically 36 months would allow these outcomes to be addressed appropriately. Nonetheless, this does not preclude submission and selection of proposals requesting other durations. For ensuring focused effort, third parties will be funded through projects typically in the EUR 50 000 to 150 000 range per project, with indicative duration of 9 to 12 months.

N.A. (not applicable)

Digital Agenda
Artificial Intelligence