Trustworthy open search and discovery (RIA)

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.