Print the whole documentPublishing on CORDIS
CORDIS follows the rules defined by the Information Providers Guide (IPG) intended for information publishers on EUROPA. Nevertheless, some specific requirements are described here.
Creation of a web service with CORDIS
Type of web services published on CORDIS
On the CORDIS website there are currently several categories of web services.
National pages
National pages provide information on the national policies and frameworks for research throughout the European Union’s Member States, candidate countries, associated countries and countries with Science and Technology Cooperation Agreements.
Regional pages
The key objective of the Regional pages is to provide an information workspace for regional research and development activities, focusing predominantly on local and regional actors.
The information workspace itself has a number of core objectives:
- to enable regions to promote their local research and development environment, activities and infrastructures in the broader European context;
- to provide local actors in the participating regions with a tangible interface to EU research and development activities
- to provide information and links to additional EU-supported resources, funds, initiatives and services.
Council Presidency Service
The Presidency Homepage highlights the research and innovation priorities, activities and related information of the Member States presiding the European Union Council.
Other specific websites
Requests to create specific websites can be addressed to CORDIS. See Section 6 for contact information.
Main steps of the creation of a website
The support and technical assistance provided by CORDIS is free of charge within CORDIS budget constraints, but there is no funding or cofunding available to the Member States.
The main steps for the creation of a website on CORDIS are the following:
- Making contact with CORDIS: The information provider contacts CORDIS with a specific request for publication on the CORDIS website (see Section 6 for contact details.) In the case of the Council Presidency Service, CORDIS takes contact with the Member State concerned before the start of the Council Presidency.
- Designation of a contact point: the information provider shall nominate a contact point that will be responsible for the content of the website. In the case of national and Council presidency pages, the relevant ministry notifies CORDIS on the appointment of the national information provider.
- Content proposal: the information provider submits a brief
proposal (1-2 pages) to CORDIS which should cover the following
aspects:
- Official capacity of the information provider, indicating the mandate to develop the service;
- Information capacity of the information provider to submit relevant information on research and development related topics (potential sources should also be indicated).
In the case of Regional pages, more details can be found at: http://cordis.europa.eu/regions/participate_en.html.
- Acceptance of the proposal: CORDIS validates the proposal together with the information provider.
- Creation of the website: CORDIS will establish an editorial and work plan to create the site in collaboration with the information provider.
- Approval of the website: once the test site is ready, the information provider is invited to validate it before launching.
Support provided by CORDIS
As part of the procedure described above, the CORDIS Unit of the Publications Office, together with its contractors, ensure the following technical aspects of the creation of the website:
- Definition of a Content Plan and Web Service Structure: analysis of the communication objectives of the web service in order to design its structure and graphical charter, the content to be published, the user functionalities, and any additional services required.
- Creation of Web Templates: CORDIS creates the web template in accordance with the web service structure agreed above and conforming to the CORDIS website standards. This will be validated with the information provider.
- Integration of Content: content produced by the information provider will be inserted in the appropriate templates.
- Test Preview: CORDIS provides an on-line demonstration version of the web service for approval.
- Sign-Off and Delivery: after validation by the information provider the web service is put in production on the CORDIS website.
Specific requirements for council presidency pages
For the Council Presidency pages, the following basic items shall be provided by the Information Provider:
- The logo of the Presidency shall be delivered as soon as possible in order to adapt the look and feel of the template developed by CORDIS.
- A photo of the minister or state secretary responsible for research shall be provided with related copyright clearance.
- Specific content: the Presidency pages are generally structured in
the following way:
- "Home" section: welcome message of the presidency to the CORDIS users
- "Priorities" section: listing of the priorities of the Presidency in Research
- "Events" section: list of all relevant events for Research during the Presidency (name of the event, date and place)
- "Contacts" section: list of all relevant contacts (Ministries, Institutes, research centres, etc.)
- "Links" section: list of the URL addresses considered to be relevant for CORDIS users.
Publishing multilingual content
Most web services hosted on CORDIS provide the user with the opportunity to download multilingual versions of full text documents where these are available.
Although CORDIS operates in six languages (English, French, German, Italian, Polish and Spanish), the language coverage of the various web services is uneven:
- National pages: the service is available in all six languages of CORDIS.
- Regional pages: the Regional Gateway is in six languages, regional pages are generally in English and in the language of the country. The language policy is decided by the information provider.
- Council Presidency pages: the Presidency website is generally available in English and in the language(s) used in the Member State concerned.
However, the Information Providers are strongly encouraged to make information content available in as many other languages as possible. Two main possibilities exist:
- to publish multilingual web pages and/or access to multilingual versions of full text documents via the English version of your web service;
- to create multilingual versions of your web service, i.e. a separate web service for each language you wish to publish.
Maintenance of a Web Service on CORDIS
Responsibilities
As stated under Section 1.6, the Information Providers are the main contact point of CORDIS for the maintenance of the content of their web service. Therefore it is of utmost importance that IPs have a clear mandate from their organisation. During the creation of the web service the IP and CORDIS agree on how, and how frequently, updates are to be made.
Content management tool
CORDIS plans to make available to the IPs a sophisticated content management tool (CMS2) which provides a set of integrated facilities to help technical and non-technical web publishers in the management of their content.
The main features of this tool are:
- Content updating in a controlled manner
- Generation of the navigational elements
- Indexation of the content
- Tracking of editor activity (record of changes made)
Editorial aspects
As part of the Europa information websites, CORDIS must follow the same editorial principles as other EU information websites. The main references for Information Providers are the Interinstitutional Style Guide and the Information Provider’s Guide.
Quality issues
By considering the various guidelines presented under section 2.3, the IPs help CORDIS in ensuring high quality of content published on the website. The main quality aspects to be considered by the IP are the following:
- Accuracy: the factual accuracy of all information must be verified prior to being sent to CORDIS for publication.
- Clarity: the content to be published shall be easily understood by diverse audiences.
- Currency: the information on the web service shall be up-to-date and regularly updated.
