The OpenWebSearch.eu project consortium is eager to identify new project teams to be funded under the OpenWebSearch.eu Community Programme, on-board and integrate them into ongoing and future activities for sustainable Research and Development on Open Web Search. 

Third-party activities are driving forces in the OpenWebSearch.eu Community Programme, with funding provided by the OpenWebSearch.eu project (funded by the EU under the GA 101070014). In spring 2023 the OpenWebSearch.eu Community Programme is coming to life. The Community Programme is comprised of activities in support of third-party project initiation, execution and successful completion. 

The applicants have to submit their appropriately formatted proposal by email to the call management (call1@openwebsearch.eu for the first call) by the given deadline. The proposal template is available for the applicants. Applicant(s) can submit at most one application per call. English is the main language for communication with the OpenWebSearch.eu consortium, and all submitted documents must be written in English.

The submission will be acknowledged by the call management, and, only after the confirmation, the proposal can be considered as being submitted. It is advised not to wait till the last moment with the submission. Note that multiple submissions of the same project are not accepted. If the submission is not confirmed within max. 2 days, and provided the call deadline has not yet passed, you may contact the Grantor at call1@openwebsearch.eu to request the information and ask for re-submission.

Topical fit and contribution to the project has been set as the key criteria for the selected third-party projects. Thus, the call addresses specific questions in the project raised by the consortium members. The evaluation will be conducted by external experts in cooperation with the members of the project consortium.

1. Relevance to at least one of the call tracks and complementarity to the project, 
2. Contribution to the goals of at least one of the five main components of the OpenWebSearch.eu project: (i) Crawling and Crawl Management, (ii) Pre-processing and Enrichment, (iii) Indexing, Search Paradigms and Search Architectures, (iv) Search Verticals, Data Products and Applications, (v) Data Storage, Provenance, and Computing Infrastructure, 
3. Importance of the target community or ecosystem, 
4. Expected impact for Open Search in general (also beyond the pilot infrastructure),
5. Feasibility.

In total 100 points will be distributed among the categories 1-5. Besides the above listed criteria, formal eligibility criteria in accordance with the grant agreement and European Regulations must be fulfilled, particularly on the target group and official funding criteria.

Following the Council Implementing Decision (EU) 2022/2506, as of 16th December 2022, no legal commitments can be signed with Hungarian public interest trusts established under Hungarian Act IX of 2021 or any entity they maintain. Affected entities may continue to apply to calls for proposals. However, in case the Council measures are not lifted, such entities are not eligible to participate in any funded role (beneficiaries, affiliated entities, subcontractors, recipients of financial support to third parties). In this case, co-applicants will be invited to remove or replace that entity and/or to change its status into associated partner. Tasks and budget may be redistributed accordingly

Please note that in the Funding &Tender portal there is a FAQs focusing on the specific implications for Horizon Europe actions which will be regularly updated.