Webinar: How to prepare a successful proposal in Horizon Europe (Morning session)

dear participants hello and good morning and welcome to this webinar on the implementation of horizon europe my name is peter i am a head of unit in the european commission's directorate general for research and innovation and i have the pleasure and the honor to guide you through our event today i am of course supported by a whole team of colleagues from my own unit from the legal unit of our director general and from also from the audit unit and maybe to start with and to show you that there are also some faces behind can i ask the colleagues that are in the room now to quickly briefly switch on their video and just wave though i will not go through all the names i will just let you watch them for a second thank you very much and then i would ask olivier to switch on the first set of slides and before we give the floor to the director of the common implementation center ana panagopolo i start with a few organizational issues so first thing to say we are very many today so we have more than 20 000 pre-registrations and as far as we can see on youtube there are already several thousand people following us that is of course a very good thing we had planned or we are still planning to make this event still interactive and the feedback channel for this will be slido you have seen it on the event webpage so for asking questions please go to slido but before you put in a question check whether your question or a very similar question is already there and if this is the case you just upvote that question and after each of the sections we will then go through the questions in the order of likes and try to reply to as many as possible of course with this mass of participants we will not be able to reply to all questions but we will use the available time which is quite generous for the question and a answer sessions to go through as many as possible and in particular the ones that interest most of you uh coming to the agenda olivier can you maybe switch to the slide with the agenda and and keep it staying thank you very much so we will soon have our director with us for a few introductory words and then we will start with the first part that will deal with the details on how to submit and prepare your proposal how the proposal template looks like and so on this presentation will be given by my colleagues isabel fergara and benedict we will then have a rather long question and answer sessions via slido as i just told we will have a lunch break and after lunch our director general john eric bakker will join us for a welcome address and we spend the rest of the afternoon with going into the details of the rules of the game meaning the model grant agreement and we finish again with a rather generous question and answer session so i should also repeat again we have tried to mention it in the different channels that the whole event will be recorded and it will of course be available afterwards for viewing and i now see that our director this has joined us and i would give the floor to her for introductory words thank you very much anna for joining us good morning good morning peter thank you for the introduction good morning to everybody i'm extremely happy to be with you today even for five minutes although i would have loved to follow the whole webinar because i do believe that it will be an important step towards successful applications from all of you and successful implementations of the projects to be signed in the context of horizon europe or initial europe the new program for research and innovation is one of the most challenging and ambitious programs not only because of its amount which is very much increased we're talking about around 90 billion euros that they are going to be allocated to the different areas for research and innovation but it's also a very ambitious program because it's for the first time i would say that we wanted to demonstrate that research and innovation activities and the spending that we do through horizon europe will make an important contribution and impact to key challenges uh green deal digital transformation health uh resilience and the recovery of europe uh today's purpose is not of course to present the priorities on the horizon europe there will be a number of info days that they are going to be organized very soon uh together with the executive agencies that are going to be responsible uh for the implementation of the program and there will be the research and innovation days where we are going to have also a lot of information about uh the horizon europe program and how it's going to contribute with its activities to the rni policy and to the overall policies of the commission these are nine days will going to take place on the 23rd and the 24th of june i'm announcing already now so that you think in the box and you have it in your calendar but it's for the first time that we have such a broad event webinar digital platforms help us and it is an event premiere of all this information where we will try to explain to you what are the rules of the game how you have to prepare your proposal how you are going to be successful what you have to pay attention in order to be successful in your proposal we are going to explain to you the novelties what we have tried to do in order on the one side to improve simplify the submission of proposals the what is going to be the template that we are going to use what are going to be uh the evaluation criteria to be used as well and the evaluation process but at the same time we would like to explain to you once you are successful what is going to be your contract what are going to be the contractual obligations that you are going to have uh and to commit yourself for receiving the eu funding and there are contractual obligations that are related to pure financial administrative aspects and there we tried our best to simplify as much as we can but there were contractual obligations that are related to political priorities such as polarization of results such as open science open access so a lot of novelties that they have been in the model grant agreement that is going to be presented but novelties for good purposes to reinforce and raise data well-known policies on research and innovation that we have put in place in the previous framework programs but we want to promote even further in this framework program i would like also to highlight that digital way of working for our framework programs is not a novelty so we have been working since horizon 320 in a coherent way with through the funding intended portal this is going to continue to be the case so and there we would try to improve and develop even further tools in order to be able to provide you with easy transparent access to information to the calls and to the grant management from a to z important issue that i would like to highlight in this next framework uh period for financing across the different commission programs synergies with our commission programs is a must is a priority therefore during the afternoon when my colleagues will explain to you about the new model grant agreement and contractual obligations you have to keep in mind that this new model grant agreement is there also centrally prepared by the commission across the different progress manage generally by the commission in order to facilitate those opportunities between the different programs so i don't want to spend worthy of time i would like to issue an excellent webinar and we would very much interesting also to have your feedback whether this type of webinars that they are cross thematic on the implementation modalities it's useful for you again i repeat today we're not going to present you the details of the program the priorities of the program but how you can be successful through the submission and application of your proposal and once selected how you will be successful in the project management and well you have a good understanding of your contractual obligation i would like also to thank all my colleagues for uh organizing this event and being with you to provide detailed explanation and reply to your answers we have 21 000 registers today which is a huge uh success i believe people coming from 130 countries which demonstrates on the one side the attractiveness to the program but on the other side the interest to know more how implementation happens in practice so thank you very much and peter the floor is yours again thank you very much anna and we will now go immediately into the substance but before doing this we will start with a very little poll on slido so also to test whether you find the slider link and everything works well on slido so i would now ask all of you to go to slido either by opening another browser window or by using your smartphone or whatever you prefer you will find there now i hope all of you you will find now there a poll a very simple poll and i would ask you to just click your the option that implies uh most to you yes it starts already so i wait for a little while to give you all the chance to participate in that poll okay i think the figures are stabilizing we see that a bit less than two-thirds indeed have participated earlier in projects but there is also quite a number of either complete newcomers or people who have no direct experience that is very good because we are also interested in attracting new newcomers in our program okay i think we can close this now please before handing over the floor to isabel uh just one more word about the technicalities so this session is as you see streamed to youtube and there is a certain technical delay between the words coming out of our mouth and you seeing it on youtube which is in your 20 seconds so please don't be irritated if sometimes there is a little delay so and with this i think we go immediately into the first presentation and isabel the floor is yours now please thank you very much peter good morning to all and i'm going to try to share my screen now i hope you can see it yes there are still there are still a few uh gray rectangles you if you can remove the controls of the zoom yep yeah good looks good now and now you are back is it good now perfect okay so thank you very much again and good morning again to all um yes so let's start this day with a presentation on a general presentation on what is new in the submission and evaluation process and as peter announced i will do this presentation together with benedict charles that will cover the second part of this slides so um i will start with a short introduction of horizon europe um i hope you are aware that we are very close to the final adoption of horizon europe which is the european union's research and innovation framework program that will run from 2021 to 2027. it has a budget of 95.5 billion euros and with this budget is it is the largest transnational research and innovation program in the world the budget of horizon europe is about 30 larger than the budget of horizon 2020 so here in this slide you see the structure of the program so there is continuity in the structure of the program with respect to horizon 2020 and horizon europe is also structured in three different pillars as you can see here in the center of this slide pillar one is a focus in scientific excellence around the european research council the maria's gladoska cree actions and research infrastructures pillar 2 aims or focus on global challenges and industrial competitiveness around 6 fixed areas as you can see listed here the six clusters and it fund projects a collaborative project so we have a minimum of three different countries participating in these projects and then a pillar three is a around innovation with the european innovation council european innovation ecosystems and the european institute of innovation and technology what we are going to present today is particularly relevant to pillar 2 so many of the things that we are going to present today are valid all across the program but some of them are only relevant to pillar too so we will try to to to to sign uh when this is the case and yes so with this i as anna mentioned so we are not going to present today the content of horizon europe so we are going to present today the rules of the game how is the evaluation how is the submission process and also the rules for participation in in the afternoon so let's start what's the novelties in the submission process what is new in the submission process in horizon europe well about admissibility our first criterion how do we admit proposals so here we don't have changes we have the same general admissibility conditions so the application must be submitted before the call deadline and they must be submitted electronically via the funding and tenders portal also the application must be complete readable accessible and principal and include a plan for the exploitation and dissemination of results unless this is unless it is provided otherwise in the specific conditions we have however a change on the page limit in the proposal and we have substantially reduced the maximum length of proposals so for the this maximum length depend on the type of action and for research and innovation actions and innovation actions the limit for a full application is now 45 pages for coordination and support actions is 30 pages and for first state proposals in two stages evaluations status missions is about 10 pages so different calls may also have different limits like for instance in the eic pathfinder that will be open the call very soon the limit is 70 pages so for the specific limit of pages in the call that you are submitting your proposal you will see the correct value in the call conditions so here um a we of course will admit a proposal that have more pages that our limit but we will automatically cut the steps the execs of of pages so we will present only to the experts the number of pages according to the limits that we publish in the in the goal conditions as in horizon 2020 about eligibility we also have some changes here so a small change in the consortium composition so here we are talking about fila 2 collaborative projects and the minimum composition of these collaborative projects is at least one independent legal entity from a member state and at least two other independent legal entities it's established either in a different member state or an associated country so we request that at least one organization from one member state participate in the project and then we have also a new eligibility condition which is the is applicable only from 2022 on so for goals with with deadlines in 2022 on and for these goals we will request two participants that are public bodies research organizations or higher education establishments from member states and associated countries to have a gender equality plan and then we also give information about the minimum requirements that this gender equality plan must have and at the time of the submission we are not going to check whether the you have your organization have this gender equality plan but we will ask you to make a self-declaration so you will have to tell us whether your organization has this gender equality plan we are going to start asking these questions since the beginning since the first calls in horizon 2020 this year but the eligibility criteria is applicable only from 2022 on as i mentioned before and in the future we will include this information in the validation of the organization so you will not have to tell us every time that you participate in a proposal whether your organization has this gender equality plan because we will have this registered in in our database of organizations um and who is eligible for funding in horizon europe well uh organizations coming of course from eu countries member states including the outermost regions the overseas countries and territories linked to member states of course also associated countries to horizon europe but also a list of countries the so-called low and middle-income countries and we have the least of those countries in the horizon europe program guide to which you have here a link is not yet published but it will come in the coming days so you have there a list of these countries that are entitled to receive a automatic funding from a horizon europe other countries not listed in in these low and middle income countries can receive funding only if their participation is essential to the proposal or if it is announced in the core conditions and then we have a specific cases so of course we also allow the participation of affiliated entities so what in horizon 2020 called linked third parties if they are coming from countries eligible for funding eu bodies have can also receive funding and then international european research organizations are eligible for funding as well other type of international organizations can receive funding only if their participation is essential to the project or if announced in the code what about associated countries so for the time being today we don't have any association agreement uh signed yet but um all the countries uh that were associated to horizon 2020 have started the negotiations with the commission to be associated also to horizon europe and for the first calls in horizon europe at the time of the submission and the evaluation we will consider associated countries all those countries that have started negotiations with the commission we will only required that if the proposal is retained for funding at the time of the grant of the signature of the grand agreement this the association agreement must have been signed for the specific situation of the uk so the uk is expected to become soon an associated country to horizon europe and of course uk entities can take part in the first goals published this year the uk will associate to the full program with the only exception of the eic european innovation council fund which is the loan equity instrument of the european innovation council so what about the activities eligible for funding so if you allow me to start with the negative so the activities eligible for funding are those described in the goal conditions with the condition that they must have an exclusively exclusive focus on civil applications and must not aim at human cloning for reproductive purposes intend to modify the genetic heritage of human beings which could make such change heritable intent to create human embryos solely for the purpose of research or leads to the destruction of human embryos so this list of activities are excluded for funding so we cannot fund these activities and we will check every single proposal that we receive that this is the case so that your proposal will not include these activities because we cannot fund the the activities and on the other hand so what is allowed so we have a large range of possible activities and depending on these activities we have defined the type of actions that we include in our program so here we have a continuity with respect to horizon 2020 so we have more or less the same type of actions that we had in a horizon 2020 so we have the research on innovation actions the innovation actions and the coordination and support actions which are the three most used type of actions in pillar 2 in the collaborative projects for research and innovation actions we found applied research so it's activities to establish new knowledge or to explore the feasibility or a new or improved technology product process service and solution for innovation action so we fund activities to produce plans and arrangements or designs for new altered or improved products processes or services then we have the type of action for coordination activities activities that contribute to the objectives of horizon europe this type of action excludes research and innovation activities except in the area of widening participation and spreading speeding excellence then we have the program called fun actions similarly as in horizon 2020 we have the innovation and market market deployment actions which are the type of actions used by the european innovation council we have the training and mobility actions these are about improving the skills knowledge and career of researchers these are the actions used in maria's kodoska curry actions and then we have as in horizon 2020 the pre-commercial procurement and the public procurement of innovative solutions this the description is exactly the same as in horizon 2020 and the maximum funding rates that we applied also depend on the type of action so here we also have continuity for research and innovation actions we have a funding rate of 100 percent for innovation action we have a funding rate of 70 percent except for non-profit legal entities where we fund 100 percent for coordination and support actions 100 percent for co-fund program confirmed actions between 30 and 70 for innovation and market deployment 70 except for non-profit which is 100 for training and mobility action 100 percent um for a pre-commercial procurement 100 percent and for public procurement of innovative solutions 50 we may deviate in a specific call for these funding rates so you need to check the goal conditions to the goal that you will apply to to know exactly what is the maximum funding rate that we will applied for for your call and then i would like to mention something about the proposal template the application form so here in this slide you have a link we have already published a the proposal template for research and innovation actions and innovation actions and um the the first message that we want to pass is the there is continuity in the structure of the proposal template so we keep two parts which is what we call part a and part b the part a is automatically generated by our id system and with the answers that you type directly in the submission tool and the part b is the narrative bar this is the bar that is subject to page limit and we ask you to upload into the submission system as a pdf document so continuity in the structure of the proposal template but we have nevertheless included some changes here in the proposal template for instance we have included new fields in the part a we have requested to we have included what we call the researchers table where we ask you to identify the researchers that will participate in your proposal or in the project in the case it is funded so here i want to clarify that we need this information because we have a horizon europe indicator so to make an evaluation of the whole program we have an indicator that's a that will tell us how the funding of the program affect the researchers careers so we are only interested in researchers we know that many of the organizations participated in the program will not include researchers so they have their companies and in many cases you the people that will work in the program in your projects will not be a researcher so we are not interested in the identity of those persons we are only interested in the identity of research so we have all also included a definition of researcher and if you're if in your organization you consider that there are no researchers you just leave this table empty so we are not asking for the identity of all persons working in the project only researchers we have also had another question about the role of participating organizations and and then of course the question about the self-declaration on the gender equality plan we ask this question to all type of participants not only to those the there is an eligibility criteria so we want to know even if it is not an eligibility criteria for some type of organizations we want to know whether your organization has a gender equality plan so this question must be answered by all participants in in horizon europe then we have some fields that say in the past were in part b and now are moved now to part a so this is about the ethics cell assessment and when you have some ethics issues we asked some questions before these explanations were part of analytics of part b now we have included this question in part a and we have also added some questions a questionnaire a short questionnaire about security this is new in all horizon europe proposals before these questions were only asked in some topics which were security sensitive now we are asking these questions to all proposals and i will give you more information later on and then the information about participants previews activities related to the goal before it was also an annex 2 or section 4 and 5 of part b not subject to page limit so we have now moved these questions to part a and then in part b so the structure is the same so because as i mentioned it has three main sections one related to to every evaluation criteria but we have done a lot of work about clarifying the terms the definitions that we use all across the program so we have included a glossary of terms we have ensured consistency of the use of the terminology in all steps of the programs starting with the with the definition of the with the drafting and definition of the word program and going through proposal and also reporting for the funded projects and then we have also include extensive explanations of what exactly should be included in its section so it might seem to be a kind of contradiction so we are reducing the the the length of the proposal while we are adding a lot more instructions in the part b but our intention is exactly that so to guide you to include in the proposal only what we are asking to so this is the reason we are giving you extensive explanations with the intention only to help you and to include only what it is relevant for our evaluations and what we want to see in all proposals so so far about the submission process so what is new in the evaluation process so first starting with the evaluation of world criteria so here we also have a kind of continuity with horizon 2020 we have the same three evaluation criteria excellence impact and quality and efficiency of the implementations excellence is only relevant for erc so erc only evaluates excellence but say we have adapted the sub criteria uh following your comments so the comments received from the stakeholders and also following lessons learned internally in our services so first we have reduced the number of aspects to be taken into account and we have ensured that the same aspect is not assessed twice so it's not included in two different evaluation criteria there is a novelty so we have now assessed we will now assess open science practices as part of the scientific methodology in the excellence criterium before it was part of the impact criterium so we have moved this because we consider that that the scientific methodologies should take into consideration the open science practices we also have a new approach to impact following what we call the key impact pathways and we have included extensive instructions in the proposal template about it about that and then a we have they included the assessment of the quality of the applicants as part of the third criterion in horizon 2020 in the third criterium quality and efficiency of the implementation we were assessing only the quality of the consortium as a whole in horizon europe we will assess in this criterion the quality of the single applicants and also the quality of the consortium as a whole and then we have removed the assessment of management structures because our experience said that all the proposals that we receive have now in all in the past in horizon 2020 include now a very well set management structure so for the experts the lessons learned that we that we have from experts was that it was very difficult to make an assessment of management structures that every single proposal includes a very good structure so here you have a sample of the evaluation criteria so this is the evaluation criteria for research and innovation actions and innovation actions and here as you can see we have only two sub-criteria per criteria so on excellence we will evaluate the clarity and pertinence of the project objectives and the scientific methodology that should take into account some considerations like open science practices gender dimension and other considerations that we list there on impact we will assess the credibility of the pathway to achieve the expected outcomes and impacts and also the methods to maximize the expected outcomes and impacts through the dissemination and exploitation plan including communication activities and on the third criteria we will evaluate the quality of the war plan and the capacity and role of each participant and the consortium as a whole here i want to to to make some clarification in particular and this is only relevant for pillar 2 for collaborative projects so when a when we assess proposals when we ask our esters to assess proposals we do to the extent that the proposed work is within the scope of our program topic so you may send a proposal with an excellent idea a very innovative beyond the state of the art but if it is not in line of the content of the call it will not receive good scores in excellence because it is important to know that in pillar 2 our goals are very descriptive so we request in detail what we expect from the project so the area in which they have to work and also the expected outcomes and impact so the assessment that we do is always against what we ask in the cold conditions so this is important to know because many times you receive an um an evaluation result which is a a bit not in line with what we what you were expecting and what i said is that maybe your idea is very good but if it is not answering fully what we ask it will not be assessed well and the same for the quality of the consortium so maybe you include participants which are excellent the consortium is also excellent but if it is not answering exactly what we are asking in the goal it will not be assessed well so for the evaluation process we also have continuity we have here um the steps of the standard evaluation process which includes four phases so the first is the individual evaluation where we ask our experts to assess proposals individually we always use a minimum of three experts per proposal but often very often we include more than three experts when the experts start their individual assessment they don't know the identity of the other experts that are also evaluating the same proposal once this phase is finished we ask the experts that have evaluated one proposal to come and discuss together and agree in a common position this is the consensus phase and then uh once the this consensus is faced it's finished for all proposals submitted in a call we put all experts that have evaluated proposals in that call to come together and reach an agreement on comments and scores for all proposals in that call checking consistency across the evaluations in the panel this is the panel phase uh they we also resolved cases where evaluators were unable to adhere in the cons in the consensus space and um and in the panel they we also rank a proposal with the same score we put an order there of proposals that receive same scores and then the last uh phase of the valuation is the finalization uh by the european commission so the decision is always taken by the european commission or agency or other eu body and with the final ranking of the proposals in that we respect always the ranking of the of the experts so this is the standard process but we have some varieties of of this process for instance in some evaluations we also include interviews like in the european innovation council european research council and there are we have some variations of this standard evolution process but this is the more used in particular in in pillar 2. we keep this standard evaluation process but we are going to pilot two novelties the first one being the what we call the right to react or the battle process and in this process we are going to include an extra step between the individual evaluation and the consensus group and what we are going to do is to send to you the comments received from every individual expert so the comments that we receive from the experts in the individual evaluation step you will read them you will not know who is behind so the identity of the of the experts is not is not exposed to you but you will receive the individual comments and you will have the time to react uh with the aim to correct any factual or major misunderstandings by the experts and and we hope that with this approach we will increase the transparency and be able to provide more detailed feedback to to applicants um so then once we receive your reaction in the consensus group when the experts sit together to agree in a common position they will take into account their individual assessment but also your reaction so this will this your reaction will also be discussed in the consensus group so we will pilot this in in one or two first calls in of horizon europe um but we have defined one called the e i c pathfinder will be part of this pilot and that will be opened very soon and then we will also have two or three more goals that are not yet identified and the second pilot is about blind evaluation so we will organize this pilot in only in the first stage of two stages calls so when we asked to submit a short version of your proposal um and here what we are going to do is not to expose the identity of the participants to the experts so the experts will not know who is behind this proposal so with these pilots we want to tackle some understandable concerns that the evaluation system is perhaps some how a bias towards well-known organizations in countries with better performing research and innovation system with this i want to highlight that there is no evidence that the current proposal evaluation system is dramatically biased on the contrary but we understand that there might there could be some concerns about a perceived a reputational bias but we as i said we do not have evidence that there is a real bias here so but we believe that with this pilot we will uh tackle these concerns and if the pilot runs well we will apply the pilot all across the program only for first stage of two stages goals so then i will finish my part of the presentation with some information about the ethics review so we have almost no changes here so you will have to answer in your proposal a questionnaire about the about whether your proposal includes some ethics issues and then depending on your answers we will launch some more in-depth ethics review and in particular if your proposal is retained for funding we always do this ethics review what we want to change here is to focus only on complex serious cases or mainly on complex serious cases and then reduce the number of effective requirements in funded projects so we want to have ethics requirements only linked to complex and serious cases this is the only change that we are going to include in the ethics review and then finally for the security scrutiny as i said we will include in every single proposal in horizon europe a questionnaire that you need to fill in you need to answer the questions that are focused on whether the proposal uses or generates new classified information whether there is potential misuse of results that could be channels into crime contraries and whether activities involve information or materials subject to national security restrictions so if there is any of these concerns in your proposal and then we will trigger a more in-depth security scrutiny of your proposal and as it was done in the past in horizon 2020 but it was only done by the topics flagged as security sensitive um in horizon europe we will check we will include this self-assessment in all proposals so with this i finished and i passed the floor to my colleague benedict thank you isabel good morning to everybody and i will uh take over from izabel now going a bit more into detail on some points to consider when you will write your proposal in a rise in europe and i will go through some of these policy considerations as we have already mentioned today so first some key principles this applies once you have identified the topic uh in which you are interested and you want to start drafting your proposals for so for all of this you will be guided by the proposal template and here we are talking mostly about what is in the narrative part of the of the templates which is the part b you can find this template we have you have a link in the in the page of this event you also have it of course on the funding and tundras portal and when you will be applying to a call under horizon europe you will find it also in the submission system through the portal so what do you have to to take into account first of all and this is something we already mentioned you need to make sure that the the work you are proposing is in the scope within the scope of what it is required in the in the work program topic if your proposal is not in scope of what is required you will not be assessed positively by the expert evaluators then and this is what will be assessed under the evaluation criteria dedicated to excellence excellence you need to demonstrate that of course your idea is great it's ambitious and it's beyond the state of the art then you will have to explain the scientific methodology of your project and you will have to take into account different aspects that are stated in the evaluation criteria and we talk here about for example interdisciplinarity open science practices or the gender dimension of the research and innovation content it should also not significantly harm the environment so in a minute i will go into more details on all those aspects so that you have a better overview of what is required here then when we talk about impact you will be able to explain and show how your project will contribute to the outcome and impacts that are described in the work program this is this key impact pathway approach that probably some of you are already familiar with and that is introduced under horizon europe you should also explain and describe which measures you are planning to maximize this impact through the dissemination exploitation and communication activities and last but not least and here we are under the quality of the implementation criteria you will have to demonstrate the quality of your work plan the resources you want to commit and the participants and the quality of your consortium so here on this slide you have a list of policy and horizontal considerations that will be considered by the evaluators of your proposal and that you will have to address here the general rule is that all these aspects open science gender dimension pathway to impact measures to maximize the impact then do not significant harm principle or the artificial intelligence they have to be considered in all horizon europe calls unless it is mentioned otherwise in the description of your topic so here again it's really important to refer to the description of your topic to really see what is required from you we have here this list of of elements and policy consideration but it's also it's also important to know that depending on the course some other specific policy and horizontal consideration could be required and i'm mostly here thinking about the inclusion of social science and humanities expertise and contribution to the project there is indeed a number of calls where this will be required and you will also find it in the description of your topic so all those elements you will have to address them in the narrative part of your proposal and you will be really guided by the proposal template we have included a lot of guidance elements to help you um addressing it and it's also worth mentioning that future webinars will be organized on some of these issues to go more into detail of each of them if you're interested and that you will also have access to guidance material so let's now go through the first of this policy consideration which is open science so when we talk about open science we talk about an approach that is based on the cooperative work and on the systematic sharing of knowledge and tools as early and wildly as possible in the research process it includes for example the early and open sharing of research for example through preprints or providing access to research outputs like publication but it's also include the active engagement of the society and citizens so when you will be uh writing your proposal as part of the excellence part of your proposal you will have to describe how open science practices are implemented in your project as an integral part of its methodology and if you think if you believe that there is no appropriate open science practices relevant to your project you will have to justify why so this is the first step second elements that will be also required through the proposal template will be to provide the data management plan something like in the length of one page more or less and here you will have to explain how your data and research outputs will be managed in line with the fair principle it means that we you will have to address all your data and research output will be findable accessible interoperable and reusable something that is also worth noting and here we are more thinking about what you will write in the last section of the proposal template focusing on the implementation of your project is that any previous experience on open science practices from any member of your consortium will also be assessed and evaluated positively under the the capacity of the participants that's it for the for the open science let's uh let's look now at the gender dimension so here's something really important uh we are talking now about the gender dimension in the research and innovation content of your proposal it's something different than the gender equality plan that isabelle introduced earlier and it's also something different than the gender balance in the team that will be implementing the project here we are really interested in addressing the gender dimension in the research and innovation uh content of your project meaning taking into account sex and gender in the world research process and why this is important you have here on this slide a list of uh of examples that i invite you to to look to uh afterwards but there is in really diverse area of the research gender dimension really makes a difference for example why do we observe differences between women and men in the infection levels and mortality rates in the kovin-19 pandemic or completely different research area does it make sense to design car safety equipment only using the basis of male body standards and not woman ones so for all these reasons and unless it is mentioned otherwise in your topic description it is mandatory in your proposal in the excellent section to describe how you plan to take into account this gender dimension in the research and innovation content of your project if you believe that it is uh not relevant for your specific project you will have to justify why you think so then let's go uh toward the question of impact so this is uh going to be evaluated uh under the second evaluation criteria the one dedicated to impact this will be the second part of the narrative application template and as we have already mentioned horizon europe is introducing this new notion of pathway towards impact so it means that applicants will have to explain how their project results are expected to make a difference in terms of of outcomes and impacts that are once again specified in the work program as in zabar introduced to you uh when we are in the framework of uh or pillar two collaborative projects you have this precise description of of the topics in the work program and the work program will state some expected outcomes and some expected impacts to make it a bit clearer uh we can look at the example that is presented here in the in the slide so we have a project uh where uh the consortium has demonstrated uh an advanced forecasting system for the airport passenger floor management in their project they have demonstrated this new system in three airports that the project results but in their applications they have to explain not only what they plan to do but how they plan to contribute to what is written in the outcomes section of the topic in the work program and here the work program says innovative accessibility and logistics solutions applied by the european transport sector so for that specific project focusing on this specific uh forecasting system the contribution to the outcome will be that at least nine european airports have adopted this advanced forecasting system not only they will have to present their contribution towards the outcome but also their contribution toward the impact and here what is your work program saying the work program saying that the impact should be seamless smart inclusive and sustainable mobility services and here the consortium will explain that their contribution to this impact will be an increase of the maximum passenger capacity by for example 15 leading to a 28 reduction in infrastructure expansion cost so that's how this uh approach could be explained in practice we can go to the next slide really briefly where you will find a table with uh with definitions i'm not going to enter into the details you will have access to the slides and those definitions are also present in the groceries that we have introduced in the in the proposal template but what it is worth to to note is that the expected outcomes that are described in your topic in the work program are the expected effects of the project over the medium term whereas the impacts that are described at the destination level in the work program meaning at a higher level there are more the wider long-term effects of your project on the society on the economy and on the science so that's it for this uh key impact sway approach but of course in your proposal you will also have to explain how you will maximize this impact and this happens through your plan for dissemination exploitation and communication activities so here again and unless it is specifically stated otherwise in the work program you need to include this draft plan it is an admissibility condition this plan will be composed of different elements that you find here on the slides they are also really well detailed in the guidance of the proposal templates it should be composed of the plan measures you want to implement to maximize impact of your projects you need to explain which are the target groups you want to to reach to which scientific communities end user actors financial actors public at large you want to address and which channels you want to use to reach them you need also to explain what are the communication measures that you want to implement to promote the your project and its finding you need to present the measures if you want to contribute to policy shaping and of course you need to introduce the strategy for the management of the intellectual property if your project is selected for funding a more detailed plan for dissemination exploitation and communication will be required as a deliverable later in the process now let's go to a new to a new policy consideration that is in line with the objectives of the european green deal and i'm talking here about the do not significant harm principle it is a principle that that um really require that research and innovation activity do not make a significant harm to any of the six environmental objectives that you see here that are climate change mitigation sustainable use and protection of water and marine resources pollution prevention and control climate change adaptation transition to circular economy and protection and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystems so if relevant you will need to address this principle in the excellent section of your application and include how the methodology of your project complies with these principles and under the impact session you will have to explain any potential negative impact on the environment that your project could uh could have so this needs to be taken into consideration when you will write your proposal but the compliance to this proposal is not mandatory unless once again it is explicitly stated in the description of your topic in the work program and the last policy consideration artificial intelligence so of course this is not relevant for all projects in all the scientific areas that are covered under horizon europe but still it is important to know that due diligence is required regarding the true sworthiness of all a artificial intelligence-based system and techniques that are either used or developed in the project that are funding under rise in europe so it means that evaluators will have to to look at it and to check if the technical robustness of the proposed ai based system uh are satisfactory and this will be evaluated under the excellence criterion of course if relevant in a given proposal so that's it for this brief overview of these policy considerations of course we will be able maybe to to address some of your questions already today we have some of our colleagues mark working more specifically on those issues that uh might be here to to answer your questions and as i said in the beginning we will organize more events and we will provide you more guidance to to address all of them and i really invite you to to look at the proposal template to read it because you will already have some important guidance information there and one last point uh before uh concluding this presentation and start answering your your questions one uh best way of learning how to write a successful proposal is actually to journalist on the other side and to um to do it by yourself to evaluate yourself proposal as an expert because as an evaluator you will really see what is working and what is not working in a proposal so for that we invite you to to register in the in the expert database you can access it through the funding enterprise portal click on the work and as an expert tab and register your profile here and hopefully be involved in evaluation of horizon europe proposals so that's it for my part and i think we can give back the floor probably to peter to to start with the question and answers yes thank you very much benedict and isabel and indeed we are even a bit ahead of schedule so we have quite some time to go through all your questions uh i would invite you now again if you have haven't yet done so to go to slido first look at the questions that are there already and upvotes them if you are interested in the one or the other or if not if you want to put a new question that is of course also possible and i would ask you now please focus in this session on the subjects that were covered in these two presentations in the morning we see already there are some questions that are more relevant for the afternoon sessions and this these will be uh also not reply now in this first question and answer session so i leave you a few minutes now before we start replying to the slide of questions and we go through them as i said in the order of number of likes so we will be back in one or two minutes and you can of course put in your questions at any moment during the presentations also the afternoon also during the question and answer session that we have now so that slider session will stay open all the time for questions and answers so i think we have accumulation of questions and we can now start going through them so i will read them and then i will ask the respective colleagues to take the floor thanks olivier so the the highest rated with 350 votes is the following the reference to the business plan in the former proposal template has been removed does it mean that no business plan is necessary unless explicitly required isabel do you want to start a reply on this one yes so indeed this is the case so unless it is explicitly required we are not asking you to include a business plan because this is one of the things that we have removed when we were discussing the the reduced length of the proposal so so indeed as it is in the question unless it is explicitly required we are not asking for a businessman okay very clear answer the next one is about the key stuff apart from researchers where are we supposed to introduce other key stuff involved as innovation manager or communication officer if they are not researchers isabelle again please well in the proposal so if you think that the exposing the identity of these persons will give you or will get so the proposal will be better assessed you can include these names in the description of the participants in in the section 3 of the proposal but for reporting we really do not want to know the identity of all staff working in the project so we are only asking about the efforts dedicated to the work but as in horizon 2020 we are not asking about the identity of all persons working in the project or in the proposal so here in horizon europe we have included this table for the reasons that we have explained because we need to follow up the career of researchers so we need to know the identity of the researchers okay thank you next one on the management does the work package on management need to include a detailed management structure now that the designated section in part b of the template has been removed isabella or benedict who wants to come in i can't cover it um so first we don't require it our package management you can always include our package so management but it's not mandatory of course it's always good to have it and here yes you should include some kind of description about the management and because if the proposal is funded this is information that our project officers will need to know indeed but as i explained this will not be assessed in the evaluation okay and the next question about open science seeing that open source open data open access and so on is a crucial part in horizon europe thumbs up very good how is this regulated how is it enforced and sanctioned and i think we have the colleague specialists on open science with us i think alia if you want to take the floor yes thank you very much peter and thank you for that question so indeed we have some obligations with regard to open access for publications if there are publications emanating from the actions those have to be in open access uh it's up to our beneficiaries to choose where to publish an option that we will put at their disposal is for example the open research europe publishing platform that the european commission will officially launch today and there is an obligation if they decide to publish their publications have to be immediately open access via the repository under ccbi with regard to open data um the obligation with regard to research data is research data management in line with the fair principles and open access to research data follows the principle as open as possible as close as necessary so open access unless exceptions apply this is what we have so indeed certain obligations and then sanctions in case of no compliance with those thank you very much i can maybe add that part of this question is actually for the afternoon session because in the grant agreement that everybody signs there is indeed quite a number of obligations and for each obligation there is also a mention of the possibilities for sanctioning so we will come back to this in in the afternoon too okay next question could you please provide more information regarding the illegitimate eligibility criterion for the gender equality plan and i think we also have the specialists on the gender issues with us so anton are you here let me now look through the [Music] no apparently not so then then maybe isabel or benedict could you give a bit more information on this eligibility eligibility criterion well i can give more information but you have the requirements that we are asking in the gender equality plan in the proposal template so we have their information about what we are asking so the content of this gender equality plan and about how we are going to check this is as i mentioned before so we will trust you so at the time the proposal is submitted and evaluated we will work with your self-declaration so if you tell us in the proposal that you have this gender equality plan then we can go ahead with the signature of of the grant during the projects it's true that we will make some checks so this is not the defines and it will be for the gender you need to to define it's a pity that and it's not here but there will be some checks done at organizational level because as soon as i explained this having or not having the gender equality plan is linked to the organization and and so far is what i can say yes okay thank you very much and as we indicated already we will have dedicated webinars we're going more into the details of all these aspects when then also the specialists on these aspects themselves will provide the presentations we will announce all this of course on our funding and tenderness bottles so if you are interested in more details please come from time to time and check the news items okay then the next one can you please clarify key impact pathways as a new approach to impact and here i look again also through our list of colleagues available yes if you want i can i can please uh here so uh for the evaluation of of horizon 2020 and horizon europe we have we are using a more impact oriented approach where we have defined the key impact pathways to track progress these are divided into scientific impact societal impact and economic impact and under these three let's say main impact areas we have other impact areas and this and the projects will be monitoring according to these um impact areas in order to inform more the evaluation of the programs but further information is available on key impact areas and and what how they are defined okay thank you next question in what way should the old management section covering governance and so on be presented how about ethics will there be a separate work package for ethics isabel or benedict well i can also cover this um yes so this we explained so as i said this will not be assessed but we need this information because it's needed later on if the proposal is is funded um and then you can give the details as you consider yeah in in the description of the work packets of management or the description of the word packages where management is included about ethics yes we will follow the same approach and when there are ethics requirements as a result of the ethics review we will create automatically an ethics work package so if you had already included an ethics work package in your proposal then during the gap preparation so if the proposal is invited to gap to start the grant agreement preparations you will have two word buckets of ethics one proposed by you another created automatically by us so during the gap you can just unify these two word packages but indeed about the whether it is mandatory to have a work packet for ethics it is not but if if you have a ethics requirements as a result of the ethics review we will create automatically our work package on ethics where we include these ethic requirements as it is the case in horizon 2020 okay thank you next question seems to me related to the european innovation council can a company present the application to both programs open and challenges in the same call and then decline one of them if proposed for grant in both we unfortunately don't have experts on the eic with us here today but maybe a general remark on this question so if it is about sending the same proposal to two different parts of the program i i would assume that the chances of being successful in both parts are very low because the different areas ask for very different topics and specifications so i think it is better to focus in an application exactly on one topic and as benedict also tried to explain the conditions and requirements in the topics are can be very specific so it doesn't make sense to put the same proposal in different parts but this does not reply the question related specifically to the eic and i'm afraid we have to come back to this after consulting our eic colleagues maybe in the afternoon session okay next one in horizon europe new application will there be an option to upload additional information for instance attached letters to show the commitment from the end users and stakeholders etc i think isabel you can reply to this one yes so the answer is only if it is required in in the call so if we ask for it then we will offer the possibility otherwise no there is no possibility to attach this letter okay the next one about the annotated model ground agreement is for the afternoon so let's skip it here and then again about the researchers table in part i how do we deal with researchers still to be recruited okay just for the variation of speakers so indeed that will be a gradual process of collecting information of the on the researchers of course in the proposal you cannot put names of people you don't know yet so what we want to know in the proposal is as it was already now in horizon 2020 who are the main drivers of this project that are already there and that are involved in the preparation of this proposal and then when it comes to the when you are successful and it comes to the ground agreement preparation you might already know a few more names and then you put during the ground given preparation these few more names in and then there will be the periodic reporting or even the continuous reporting and as soon as you have employed a new researcher you add them to the table and then of course with the final report for the last reporting period this table should be complete and should show the ones that actually were involved in in the project i hope that is clear enough the next one i th next question we have replied will the funding rates for ria ercsav the same as in age 2020 the simple reply is yes and i refer to the slide that was presented on this and it will be made available afterwards as we emphasize all the time next one is an interesting one can you name the top three points that the successful application should contain is a benedict would you dare doing this i mean we had already some of the elements on some of the slides but if you if you have to name the three most important well for me um those three most important will be those that make the evaluation of the proposal excellent in the three criteria in the excellent criteria in the impact criteria and in the quality of of the implementation so it's diff it's difficult to name three only three points because the end of this presentation was exactly that to name all important points that you need to consider in your application so so for you you just need to get your proposal score very well in the three criteria otherwise our experience said that you will not have chances to be funded and maybe one other remark is that you should really read very very carefully the topic description because apart from the excellence of your idea and the excellence of the organizations and people involved what counts very much is whether your project proposal actually fits the objectives and the purposes of the call topic so that is absolutely crucial at least in the parts that we are talking about here which is the uh the pillar two where we have predefined subjects and topic areas it's different of course in the bottom up areas okay i hope we could at least partially reply to this question next one page limits are significantly reduced has the amount of information proposals are asked to provide also been reduced yes we have tried to reduce the amount of information that we ask but especially what we have tried is to guide you to the information that we need and nothing else and and also we are given um as indicative the number of pages that you need to dedicate to every section and to every question in that we ask you in the proposal plate so we have piloted this reduced number of pages in the last course of horizon 2020 and this reduced number of pages were well received by the applicants and with these better instructions that we include in the proposal we really think that to have a proposal with this reduced number of pages is feasible and it will also be helpful for you applicants and for experts as well this this is what i do yes okay we should maybe repeat again that of course these page limits are not absolute for the total proposal it is for for specific parts of the proposal so if you have a big consortium with 50 partners you need of course more pages to describe the 50 partners but this does not count in the limit it counts for the parts where indeed the project is described as such in its different aspects okay next question can i quickly interrupt uh he has joined us again sorry has joined us again ah okay thank you very much so then maybe we can go back for a minute to the question on the gender equality plan and how we apply this eligibility criterion and do you want to take the floor i hope you have heard the overview information that was given in the slides in the presentation but maybe you can elaborate a bit more how this will work in practice yes thank you apologies i was disconnected when this question was asked so for the the gender equality plan eligibility criterion uh there are four mandatory requirements that we require from public bodies research organization and higher education so research education and higher education be there public or private from member states and associated countries and i believe uh isabel recalled this this targeted establishment and the four minimum process-related requirements are the following uh the gender equality plan should be a formal document which is published on the eastern institutions website and signed by the top management uh if the well let's the the second one is dedicated resources there should be a commitment of resources and some gender expertise to implement the gender equality plan the third one is data collection and monitoring sex and gender disagree desegregated data on personnel and when it's relevant on students should be collected monitored and annual reporting based should be based on indicators and the fourth one is training with with awareness-raising trainings on gender equality including on unconscious gender biases to be delivered for staff and decision makers so these are the four elements that should be uh covered by the gender equality plan if these elements are covered in another type of strategic document an inclusion and diversity uh plan or or some strategic institutional document it it will be considered as an equivalent in addition to these four mandatory requirements we recommend areas to be covered and these there are five areas work-life balance and organizational culture gender balance in leadership and decision making gender equality in recruitment and career progression integration of the gender dimension into research and innovation well in and teaching content when relevant and measures against gender-based violence including sexual harassment these all these areas are not mandatory but strongly recommended we will be publishing more detailed guidance on this gender equality plan requirement and we'll also uh offer some trainings some mutual learning uh seminars uh and develop some national contact points through a pilot knowledge and support facility that we have just launched so there will be uh more information available on how to get uh the level of requirement that is requested for all institutions to be eligible okay thank you very much and i turn to the next question in our list again about the information about researchers if no stuff in an organization for instance an sme counts as researchers should other key stuff be included in part a should their pm be included in part b isabel you want to come back to it yes so of course if you want to name a key staff you have to do it in the description of the participants also in birthday but in the fields where we asked the description of the participants so in the researchers table we really need to know or we are only asking about researches and of course about the efforts that you will dedicate to your project you should include all the persons that will be paid with the funds of the project so this the the efforts the person wants to all persons involved in the period should be included so we are asking the identity of the researchers as i said only because we need to answer one indicator for the evaluation of the whole program of horizon europe that we need to follow the career of the researches this is the only reason we are asking for the identity of the researchers exactly thank you next question again on the eic for registration to the accelerator call doesn't necessarily only need a valid pick or is the sme self-assessment still required i can reply this myself so indeed being an sme if it is an eligibility criterion and i think in this case it it would be then the sme self-assessment is required but i think it's not only required it's also very prudent to do this for yourself because uh it helps you really assessing whether you are an sme based on the sme definition or not if you just go into this and you believe you're an sme and then afterwards there is an exposed audit and the audit finds out you don't fit hundred percent with the definition you would be in trouble so even if it's not obligatory if even if it was not obligatory i would recommend you to do it to be on the safer side on your status as an sme and the next question what about the overhead rate 25 for all smh 2020 the reply is very simple and it is yes again of course there are exceptions because we will also have projects that are funded via lump sum project funding and in this case all this will not no longer be relevant because the whole project would be funded by a simple lump sum and then of course there is no 25 percent over a trade but in the normal cases when we have the cost real burst man grants the 25 rate for covering indirect costs is applicable as in age 2020. next question can you compare h2020 and horizon europe templates and key changes i think we tried this in the presentations that we have just given benedict can you give more hints or i mean is there can we imagine to to to publish compare documents i think that would be difficult maybe we can make these slides that we just presented even more clear even clearer and and more elaborate isabel what do you think yes so this is exactly what i try to explain in one slide so in part a is about the same as in horizon 2020 with three more questions and new fields that i explained in this in the slide and the part b the only thing the same is the title of the section so we keep the same three sections but the all the instructions and all the explanations that we include have been totally reformulated so you will not find anything similar there so and this is what we try to explain in in the slides okay thank you again a question on gender balance i am afraid anne has left us again gender balance will be taken into account during the evaluation will gender bias be accounted for research domains with predominantly more male researchers in the absence of and with isabella benedict would you have a hint on this yes so as you can see in the evaluation criteria we don't include gender balance so we have some requirements for gender balance in our site so we will try to always use a balanced panel of experts regarding gender but we of course ask the participants to have a gender balance in in their teams but it's not part of the evaluation what it will be included nevertheless is when we need to rank proposals with the same scores one of the criteria that we are going to use is exactly this the gender balance in the teams of the participants and of course those participants or those proposals with participants with a better balanced regarding gender will be ranked up front in the group of proposals with the census course but we have other criterias also that will apply it first so this we will announce those criterias in the word program text but gender balance is one of them is the second criteria that we will use okay thank you next question will this tv of the people dealing with all the aspects of the project management very relevant for coordinating institutions be considered no more and that that goes back again to the question on why we ask all these data on researchers and maybe now i try to again to explain what we mean with this so the focus on researchers is really only for having for collecting structured information that we can afterwards process and we can go into researchers databases and look whether they have more publications following the funding that they have received from us this does not mean that you can not describe your proposal also in terms of other people involved the only thing is you do not have to tell us exactly who are these other people so coming back again to the researchers the the ideal situation for us is if the researchers give us their a unique id so for instance an orcid id and then we can do the project program monitoring x posts during the next 10 years because we can look into the orchid id database and see what happened to these researchers in the 10 years after they have received funding from us this we do not have to do and will not do for anyone who is not a researcher in the strict sense but still all these other people if they are relevant for running a project and if they contribute to the quality and excellence of the projects can of course be mentioned in the narrative part i hope that is now rather clear okay next one many if not most times the researchers phds and postdocs are hired after the proposal is approved for funding how will this impact the researchers table i try to reply this one already it is a gradual process of gathering information on the researchers involved the first set up of the main people in the proposal who are known at that time another set to be encoded after the end of the grand agreement preparation when you sign the grant and then you report in regular intervals and at the end of the project when you do the final report all researchers that were actually involved should be encoded in our system okay next one for a large entity a company open science may be a barrier for ip protection how will the evaluator address if a company does not want to publish data alia that is a yes so here again as mentioned before uh there are exceptions to the openness of a research data so as long as the proposer sufficiently address addresses these and duly justifies that is completely fine what is important is a research data management and the management of research outputs and that sufficient information is provided on that also in the cases in which research data is going to be closed so to duly justify and to sufficiently address why research data is going to stay closed okay thank you and again the question on the researcher table is more for universities what about large companies and again the same reply if in your company there is nobody involved in the project fitting the definition of researcher then you don't put anyone in but still you can of course put the description of the main participants in your proposal in the narrative part okay next one will there be guidelines in information material on the new impact section isabel please yes yes so we we will have guidance embedded in the horizon europe program guide so there is a section on dedicated on impact and of course as announced previously we will organize in april another event focused on these policy aspects of the the new way to to evaluate impact is one of them and if needed and if the our colleagues dealing with these key input pathways considered so they can also organize specific webinars dedicated only to this yeah but in april we will organize this webinar presenting the policy aspects okay next one will there be guidance on the gender equality plans i think our colleague ann has replied yes and there will also be dedicated uh other webinars on all these aspects including on the the gender issues we can already announce now that we will have one more webinar possibly on the 21st of april where we go in more detail through the issues that we mentioned on one of the slides open science gender dissemination exploitation and so on so for the more specialists among you 21st of april is the date to be kept in mind okay next question disappointed on the researchers section why making all other relevant stuff invisible if only for starts collect this in info in the gap phase instead of pre-one in again we should emphasize the purpose of the collection of these data we have to do this only for researchers it does not mean that only the researchers count in the quality of your proposal and please put all the necessary information about other people into the narrative part it's just that we do not want to bother you with keying in a lot of structured data i need on each and every person okay next one proposals have to cover a lot of the same things as a 70 page proposal tables in section 3 4 are added will you instruct evaluators so they allow less details saber well yes i think we covered this um the tables in section 3 4 were also added before in the page limit and what we have done is just to try to help you to summarize better your ideas to present better your ideas and to guide you on what we really need to evaluate your proposal and and we really believe and this we are doing this not only because we want it's because we this is a request coming from stakeholders a recommendation that we should have proposals with less length and so that was the main reason that we are reducing the the number of pages but the how we instruct the valuators yes they will be informed that we have a limit in the proposals but they will also be informed about the instructions that we have added in the proposal template so they will know what we are asking you so this is something that we always import to the experts okay next question for which calls will the pilot for blind evaluation be applied i guess it's again for isabel yes so we have not yet identified the goals it will probably most probably will be next year goals in 2022 but what it is sure is that will be goals that are organized in two stages and the blind evaluation applies only to the first stage so it will most probably be next year calls 2022. okay the next question how is the vit issue treated under your horizon europe i will postpone to the afternoon because that is part of the model ground argument issues and the responsible colleagues will be there in the afternoon when will the csa templates be available isabel it should be there it was published yesterday so it may take some hours to be there but it will be published today okay just in time very good next one when should we expect an update of the list of associated countries and should the initiative association come from a particular institution in the country maybe i start replying it myself but again we will have our lawyers with us in the afternoon who might be even more specific so association is indeed a political question between a country and the european union so the initiative comes from the government of that country there as it was said in the presentation there is already quite a number of countries that have started and taken this initiative and it's in particular the countries that are associated to horizon 2020 and also the united kingdom for all these i repeat as it concerns submission of an evaluation of proposals we we will pretend they are already associated so we will treat them as if they were associated meaning they can participate in the proposals like everybody else and also the experts will assess their participation like a participation from a member state only when it then comes for the successful proposals to the signature of the grant agreement at that moment the actual association agreement between the country and the european union has to be in place but we hope that this will be the case for for all the associated countries that or for all the countries that already started association negotiations okay next one do you have an example of a gender equality plan it seems i'm your back can we make this available yes as i said we will uh well we already have actually quite a significant amount of information on gender equality plan there's a website online website that we developed in 2016 with the european institute for gender equality which is called the gear tool gender equality in academia and research which is already a step-by-step guide on the implementation of gender equality plan and that built on lessons learned an example best practices developed by institution most of them funded through horizon 2020 and fp7 in gender equality plan projects so there are also the individual websites of these projects with a large amount of examples of gender equality plans and again uh we will be developing additional guidance fitting the specific requirements that i mentioned earlier uh which are the four uh process related mandatory requirements and the five content related uh recommendations which we call the building blocks so there will be coming up uh in the coming months uh detailed guidance on these okay maybe we can already make the link to the existing website available and we will put it on the our event webpage so that you all find it afterwards good uh next question could you explain better the key impact pathways should the proposal include also the kpi related to the key impact pathways i i don't think we can go into the details now but we will have dedicated webinars on this and you are invited to follow them i don't know benedict do we have this one slide where we show the three main areas and the the nine i don't have it yet but i can have it in one minute okay so maybe we come back to it in one minute and cover it very quickly but as i said we cannot go into the details here next one what happens if research organizations click no in the proposal regarding the gender equality plan exclusion or possibility to provide a gender equality plan later anne do you want to take this one sure well as isabel underlined this eligibility criterion will only be enforced in a year from now with calls with deadlines in 2022 so we hope that with the guidance that we provide all organization will be uh up to date and and will fulfill the requirements uh and i think she uh isabel also underlined that this there will be a tolerance let's say uh it's at the grant agreement signature that the gender equality plan will be required so but if you click no indeed normally you should not be eligible starting with that calls with deadlines in 2022 yes i think that is the important element it becomes relevant for you only starting with deadlines in 22. if you say no in the first calls nothing will happen to you we will of course take note and we will prepare the statistics and we will be very curious to see how many of you have already in gender equality plan but you should prepare for the day when the first deadline in 22 comes and then all these organizations that were mentioned public bodies research organizations academic organizations must have at the latest when they sign a grant following a 2022 deadline meaning towards the second part of 22 this will be the moment of truth so to say okay next one the management structure has been removed from the template how can projects choose their structure will they be able to choose from different options isabel yes so we already explained that what we are changing in horizon europe is that we will not assess the management structure as part of the evaluation but of course we are asking you to include some details when you describe the management of the proposal as part of one of the work packages and no we are not going to offer several possibilities we were thinking about it at two years ago or something when we start the discussions but we we finally are not going to do it so you will be free to to select your management structure okay next question when will the first calls especially for research and innovation actions be published so we should refer to the calls that are already published so the first ones that were published with the indeed the erc european research council calls they are open and you can submit since three weeks i think then the next calls that were already published are the ones of the european innovation council the work program and the calls are available the submission system for the eic is not yet open but it will open beginning of april and then the question is of course about cluster 2 and research and innovation actions and there the plan is to have the so-called main work program adopted by the end of april and then soon after the adoption of course the calls will all be open so this will be done the first big wave next one is there a possibility yet to achieve a patent on something and and fulfill the open science requirement i'm afraid alea has left us no i'm here peter oh sorry i couldn't oh so please go ahead yes so actually the decision on whether to publish or to commercially exploit your results for example the i patent is a decision that our beneficiaries will have to take before in the case in which they decide to publish so i repeat here we are not forcing our beneficiaries to publish in the case in which they decide to publish their peer-reviewed publications will have to be available in open access but it's a decision they have to take whether they want to publish or not or whether they want to commercially exploit the research for example bi patent okay i think it's very clear i don't i mean we should emphasize that this there is no contradiction because filing in a patent is also a method of publishing your results okay what percentage of stage one proposals will be invited to stage two please isabel yes so here we have not changed anything and in horizon europe we invite to states to um a number of proposals that represent three times the budget available this we keep the same room okay next one when will the marie squad oscar curie action templates be available do we have any indication on this is benedict no we don't but we will try to publish as soon as possible yeah yes and i think the idea if i remember well is also to publish the first calls for the marie scott very soon so the templates must be available very soon okay next one the evaluation criteria are much the same how will you avoid that evaluators demand the same level of detail as in horizon 2020 in the much shorter proposal interesting question [Music] yes so so indeed the valuation criteria are the same but our guidance to experts will be adapted to what we ask in horizon europe so of course we will adapt our guidance to experts and we they will receive the same level of information that the applicants receive so this is what we are trying to do so here the esters will receive the same information that we are sending to to applicants okay can a coordinator subcontract project management tasks to professional organizations uh that is a question partially for the afternoon but maybe isabella benedict or anyone else wants to come in already to give an indication yes if i am not mistaken the answer is no yeah but probably this is better for the lawyers too yes so we save the question for the afternoon next one what will be the maximum time limit to complete the project so i assume this question is about the maximum length that the project can have i can try to reply myself i don't think there is any prescribed maximum length of a project normally it all depends on the description of the individual call topic and what is supposed to be achieved we can maybe give typical lengths of projects and i think in the area of the collaborative projects meaning pillar 2 in horizon europe the projects are typically between three and five years isn't it yes indeed it's true that some calls put some limits but these are the minority so you need to check the call conditions but if you cannot find anything then there is freedom for for the length of the projects but as you said normally it goes from three to five years next one will a consortium agreement be required in the same way as in age 2020 i sh postponed this question to the afternoon two it is related to the grant agreement how is the quality of the applicants assessed isabel and benedict yes so here i think it's important to take into account what i said during the presentation so we are not assessing the quality of the applicants in absolute terms so we are assessing the quality of the applicants to perform the actions that they include in the proposal and also if those actions are in line what would what we ask in the topic uh description and for this we ask in the proposal template in the bar 8 in in horizon europe so what are the publications that the applicants have made in the area what are the achievements that the applicants have made in in the area and here you have freedom to to give as much information as you considered for the experts to allow the experts to evaluate the quality of of the entity in relation to the proposal that they are presenting and to the topic that we are going to okay next question on blind how can blind evaluation be made compatible with the evaluation of the quality of the consortium and the individual partners it's a belly again yes so as we explained we will have blind evaluations only in the first stage of two stages of evaluations and in the first stage we never evaluate the third criteria so we only evaluate the excellence and part of the impact criteria so actually in the first stage participants are not obliged to to give us information about the identity of the whole construction so we are only evaluating the the idea and partially the impact of the proposal okay can i modify the list of researchers once the project has been approved isabel again and then i might complement yes well of course during reporting we understand that the projects may suffer some changes and and then this is understandable but we probably will check carefully that the researchers that you include in the proposal are the same that are included during the grand agreement preparation because yes we really want to check that that those experts that researchers may be high quality researchers renowned researchers and the experts evaluated your proposal taking into account that those researchers were participating that those are really part of the proposal this we will look into the grant preparation yes maybe to say even a bit more brutally uh so indeed in the proposal you are supposed to indicate the main carriers of the projects in terms of the eminent people involved and if then as soon as you win the project they will all disappear and will be replaced by phd students then the whole evaluation will no longer be valid so in that sense you cannot modify of course there can always be exceptions there can be people changing the organization and then in individual cases they have to be replaced but we should make sure and we will also have a look at the people that you describe in your proposal as the pillars of this whole project that they are at least the majority of them is still there also for the actual implementation of the project okay next one the usual dissemination activities like science trade shows conferences consortium meetings etc suffered major disruptions during 2020 how to tackle this i think this is for yanis janis i see you're yeah yes yes i'm i'm here indeed there was a disruption in 2020 so when it comes to to new proposals i guess um everything will start being resumed i mean something that affected everybody not only the dissemination activities so i guess for new proposals we expect that everything that you put down in your in your plans will have to do with future and we expect few future situations to be much more close to normality and if it has to do with with existing projects then i guess it has to be dealt in case by case with with your respective project officer okay thank you next question is it possible to submit a project containing a dual use military and civil technology but aim specifically at civil application in the proposal maybe i give this question to ulrich because you are involved in this security scrutiny discussions can you do you want to yes i can give that a try um i the way the question is worded i believe this is indeed a possibility so we can absolutely involve companies that would otherwise be in the military acted in the military sector as long as the proposal and the the aim of the proposal is exclusively focused on a civil application and i guess this should be very clear in your proposal to make it very clear that your objectives and the aim of the proposal is entirely civil and in that case i see no problem okay thank you next one i was expert for horizon 2020 am i automatically also for horizon europe or do i have to register myself again isabel yes um so the call for special of interest for horizon 2020 ended on the 31st of december of last year and we have today published a new call for expression of interest for espers in you you can find it in the portal but nevertheless um if a for the previous years uh when you register as an expert you had the possibility to select the different programs that you wanted to participate and there was an option saying any future eu program so if you had selected this option before then you are automatically registered for the next mfm if not please go go to your expert profile and check whether it is still valid you can do it now so as i said we hope we have published the call for expression of interest yesterday and what it is new is that this call for expression of interest is corporate so it is valid for all eu programs and so when you opt to this experts database you opt to participate as an expert in all eu programs of course the different programs will only call you because they need your expertise so they need your expertise they go to to to the expert database and then they will contact the experts they need if you don't feel sufficiently familiar with a program you can always say no to the participation of this program with no other implications and yes so this is always possible okay next question can a university based in the uk or switzerland be leader of a consortium i can reply this myself in principle the answer is yes again it all depends of the status of being an associated country meaning that once uk or switzerland are fully associated then there is no problem in the current situation the uk or switzerland can be coordinators in a proposal but there is i mean as i said once it comes to the signature of the grant the cons the association agreement must be in place but in principle the answer is yes next one is there a glossary for all the eu funding acronyms and expressions one has a hard time navigating so many acronyms and special names used in the documents i agree even for me it's difficult and yes we have a glossary on the portal but we i think we have to work more and update it even more uh to cover everything also the things that are new under the new funding program so so the answer is yes a glossary exists but this glossary has to be further improved next question from a peculiar participant if ai policy consideration is mandatory what are we supposed to write if our proposal has nothing to do with ai benedict yeah i can address this one so uh what we say is that the expert uh will have to to look at the artificial intelligence issue and answer if yes or no there is something to for them to access but of course if your proposal has nothing to do with ai we will not ask you to to write something not read event or just uh writing notes so there is not even this specific section on the proposal template so if it is not relevant it's just not to be addressed but uh experts will still have on their side to tick a box or on the ai issues okay next one will you cover open access costs alia yes so with regard to the article processing charges for open access that some journals charge we will reimburse those in full open access venues so in those venues in which all content is openly accessible to everyone for those publishing venues consider hybrid venues in which some content is closed only restricted to subscribers and some content is open um apc's article processing charges will not be eligible for reimbursement but our beneficiaries will be free to publish whatever they want in hybrid venues full open access venues subscription venues and then provide open access via the repository is just that in hybrid venues we will not be reimbursing those costs okay thank you the next question again are the key impact pathways and i don't know um benedict did you find in the meantime this slide yes so i can try maybe very quickly but then we refer to separate um events where this will be explained in more detail so i will try to to share my screen to show this slide probably i have also to remove the gray zones i don't know if it's visible it comes it's it looks good already if you yes i would put it bigger it's perfect so i don't know if someone else from the college prison here wants to go a bit into detail or if we leave that for the next meeting if there is nobody from the respective service maybe i go through it very quickly so the idea of these key impact pathways is of course for our program first to create impact but then also to be able to monitor the creation of impact and to be able to report back to our masters meaning to the member states and the european parliament but in the last instance also to the european citizen why spending all this money uh on research and innovation is useful and we asked the taxpayer to contribute to it and so in in this approach that is also has its base in the legal acts of verizon europe there are three main areas on which we have to monitor the the monitor the potential impact it's scientific impacts societal impact and economic impact and within each of these big areas there are three more detailed indicators so to say i will not read all of all the nine of them we will also make this slide available afterwards but for for gathering data and monitoring the impact in all these nine indicators we will on the one hand ask some information from you the applicants and beneficiaries you will combine this information that you deliver with other information that is available for instance in publications databases in intellectual property right patent databases in databases of companies in databases for researchers as for instance orcid and so on so that is the idea and then of course as was already presented in one of benedict's slides there is a direct link between the high-level policy objectives of the program the work programs the strategic plan and the description of the impact section in the individual topics and you should keep this all in the back of your mind when you start preparing a proposal okay i think i leave it at that for the moment and we will come back to it in separate specific specialist sessions okay going back to the list of slider questions if possible next question in table three one h what exactly is remaining purchase costs what's the difference with other goods works and services this might again be a question for this afternoon because we will also go through the the budget tables and the details in the afternoon so i will post on this one uh next one i can't see now and i have to go into the which is the role to be dedicated to smes as they should not appear in summary of staff efforts only researchers do i i think that's again a misunderstanding isabel do you want to try to clarify again yes so indeed this is a misunderstanding so what we are asking in the research table is only the identity of persons because we are committed to follow up the career of researchers and this is an indicator that we will use to evaluate the whole program horizon europe of course on the staff efforts we are asking different details in the proposal template so we will not go to the research table and in the research table indeed we have no questions about efforts there so we will ask a staff efforts in the same way as we did in horizon 2020 and for this as in horizon 2020 we ask you the personal mods dedicated for every work package so here we do not ask the person once per person this we have never asked in horizon 2020 and we continue with this approach we ask for some months per war package and per participant and this is the level of details that we are asking regarding efforts i hope this guy fights so maybe to say it yet again this researchers table is not subject to the evaluation there will be no score on the data you put in this researcher table you should describe the quality of the consortium including the main people involved also in the narrative part and in the narrative part you can of course put information on any kind of person involved in your proposal next question can a single individual be counted as a legal entity capable of being part of a consortium if so how will costs and funding rates be calculated we will come back to this question also in the afternoon but uh to give a very immediate question already the the principal to reply is yes as a natural person you are of course a legal entity we do this all in our daily life we sign contracts uh in every moment so you are a legal entity and you can in principle participate uh and then on cost of funding rates we will come back in the afternoon next one will the slides be available yes yes yes and you go to the event web page and we will put all the background information including all the slides and the links that we refer to in this event web page you will find it back there maybe i can already say that uh they are there already so you just need to refresh the page for example during granted break so that you don't break the video very good thanks olivier next question how long does the evaluation process take how many months on average yes so we have uh for pillar two so we are talking about pillar two we have a target of time to inform of five months so from the cold deadline until we inform about the results of the valuation is about five months and then we have another three months for for to prepare the ground force for signature so in total from call deadline to grant signature is eight months and to inform after evaluation results is five months this does not apply to the erc so the erc has longer periods okay maybe just to add in practice these eight months and the five months are the maximum that are allowed in practice i think the current average is even below if i remember well the average time to grant from call that line to signature of the grant is in the out of six months nowadays okay next one how can we prove or demonstrate the gender dimension do we just need to explain this in the proposal or do we need to include a specific deliverable deliverable for this an are you still there yes i'm still here there there is no uh uh requirement of having a specific deliverable it's something you can have you can have a dedicated work package as well but uh so the idea is to describe how it's relevant in your specific uh project if the topic is not does not specify that is it is not relevant so as explained it's it's now a requirement by default uh and for this you can this this can intervene at different levels uh the way you formulate your your research questions uh the way you develop your methodology how you gather uh analysis and sex disaggregated or gender desegregated data sex being the biological uh component and and gender the social cultural aspects and more behavioral aspects again on this we will provide guidance and there is already a detailed guidance in a recent report that we published on the 25th of november which is called gendered innovation to how inclusive analysis contributes to research and innovation in which you have many examples of methodologies for sex analysis for gender analysis and also for intersectional analysis so looking at intersection with other social categories including ethnicity for example sexual orientation disability and you also have concrete case studies on how to do this so it's it's up to to the applicants to to explain how they envisage this um of course it's also important in how you evaluate and you report your results and or how you will transfer them to markets into products and innovation that will benefit uh all citizens uh and also promote gender equality so this is uh basically the what's under the umbrella term of integrating the gender dimension in research and innovation content i hope this helps okay thank you next question what when are the info days to be expected um we will have a slide that we show at the very end this afternoon but already to anticipate we have in internal planning i am not authorized to give you the exact dates but i can tell you that for the six clusters for each of them there will be a separate info day uh sometimes it's even two day events per cluster and for all these clusters this will also be coupled with brokerage events because i see there are also questions about how to find partners and all this will happen in may so the first one if everything go goes well will already be end of april and then for the other five clusters during the month of may and there will also be an info day in addition on the so-called widening part of the program also planned for may and i'm sure that the exact dates will become available very soon and then we will publish them on our portal and maybe to add up to this this is about the info days where we speak about the content and the subjects and the topics we have planned our next webinar of this kind for the 21st of april where we will go in more detail in all these policy and horizontal aspects on which we receive so many questions here also okay next question again on the page limits when one adds up your suggestions for page length for each chapter and all tables this is more than 45 pages where should applicants stay short benedict you want to take this one well um it should be 45 pages i guess we need to recalculate ourselves but well the suggestions are the suggestions uh of course you need to to dedicate sufficient number of pages to the scientific methodology of your project to its objectives you need also to to address the impact but probably we could say that in all of those sections like you need to be straight to the point you need to be concrete you need to really explain how your proposal want to to address for example i'm especially thinking about the the part on the this new part on the impact pathway and how your proposal is uh supposed to address the outcomes and impacts of the of the work program like you need to be really convincing on this you need to explain what is a concrete contribution of your concrete projects to those impacts and here i would say it's not needed to add lots of pages explaining some impacts that are not directly the concrete impacts of your project so from the top of my head i would say it's here that you need to be short but convincing okay so i suggest that this will now be the last question before the lunch break are phd students included in the researchers count who knows by heart the researcher definition is there anyone with us yes because it is included in the proposal templates yeah so we have there the possible values of the different categories and the category d first stage researchers and you have the definition also in the template are either doctoral students or researchers working in posts that do not normally require the three degree so yes so they can count us okay um maybe we take this the next one still because i'm still with us she will probably not be with us this afternoon for which course in 21 is the gender equality plan necessary for publicly funded bodies or is there a grace period for organizations to establish the job well no calls in 2021 as we explained it's only starts for calls with deadlines in 2022. okay that is clear so thank you very much uh so far for the first part of our webinar we were really impressed by the many questions and also by the quality of the questions i hope to see you back after the lunch break we will start again at two o'clock sharp we we will keep the slider open so you can even put in questions over lunch if you want so and otherwise i wish you a nice lunch break or for some of you who are not in the center european time zone breakfast or even dinner see you back at two o'clock

Channel: EU Science & Innovation

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Length: 147min 14sec (8834 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 24 2021