3RD OPEN CALL
1. GENERAL INFORMATION
The EC funded EUHubs4Data project has allocated 5.8M Euros to provide support to third parties to undertake up a set of data driven cross-border experiments through three rounds of open calls.
We are inviting SMEs (including start-ups) and groups of web entrepreneurs to propose experiments that make use of the EUHubsData federated catalogue of data-driven services and datasets for the development of innovative products or advanced services.
1.080.000€
TOTAL CALL BUDGET
18
GRANTED PROPOSAL
60.000€
FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTION PER BENEFICiARY
SERVICES & DATASETS
FEDERATED CATALOGUES OF DATA-DRIVEN SERVICES AND DATSETS
70.000€
DIH SUPPORT VALUE PER EXPERIMENT
09/11/2022
DEADLINE
FEB 2023
START OF THE EXPERIMENTS
9 MONTHS
DURATION OF THE EXPERIMENTS
2. CALL DOCUMENTATION
3. WHAT IS IN FOR YOU?
Access to the latest developments on Data Analytics and advanced assets on Big Data.
Technical & business coaching and continuous follow-up support by Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) valued up to 70.000€ per experiment
- 60.000€ financial support
- Visibility and promotion.
- Exploitation plan
4. WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
Experiments that make use of the services included in the federated catalogue, proposing combinations of them for the development of innovative products or advanced services.
- Involve, a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 5 data-driven services from the federated catalogue, provided by a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 3 different DIHs, where at least one DIH comes from a different country than the one of the applicant.
- Use, at least, one dataset in the experiment regardless it is from the EUHubs4Data catalogue of datasets or external to the catalogue.
- Contribute to the specific challenges set up by one (or several) of the European Data Spaces presented within the framework of the European Data Strategy or identify other data-driven challenge(s) of other sectors not included in the current Data Spaces where the experiment can contribute to.
- Achieve Key Exploitable Results (KER) that could be delivered to market in the form of innovative data driven product or service.
- Contribute to the KPIs of the EUHubs4Data project.
5. WHO CAN APPLY?
Individual SME legally established in an eligible country.
Group of individuals legally established in an elegible country.
Detailed eligibility criteria can be found in the Guidelines for Applicants.
6. HOW TO APPLY?
3rdOpenCall
3RD OPEN CALL WEBINARS
EUHubs4Data have organized two informative webinars (19th September and 25th October 2022) to explain in detail the most relevant aspects about the open call, the scope of experiments and the evaluation.
Daniel Alonso
Artificial Intelligence & Big Data Partnerships Driver (Instituto Tecnológico de Informática)
Jorge Lorente Giner
R&D Project Consultant (Zabala Innovation Consulting S.A.)
FAQS
ABOUT EUHUBS4DATA
What is EUHubs4Data?
EUHubs4Data is an Innovation Action project co-funded by the European Union. The project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme (call DT-ICT-05-2020 Big Data Innovation Hubs) under Grant Agreement No 951771.
EUHubs4Data was launched in September 2020 to create the European reference for Big Data experimentation and innovation, leveraging the achievements of relevant European initiatives on Big Data, linking all of them in a single ecosystem, composing a whole catalogue of data sources and datasets, services, and models, and providing a one-stop-shop that ensures that European companies at any level could easily access the economic opportunities offered by Big Data.
How can EUHubs4Data help me?
How does EUHubs4Data work?
So, are you financing my initiative?
Your experiment could be financed if you are selected in any of the EUHubs4Data calls. Conditions are found in the “Guidelines for Applicants”.
A selected experiment will be funded with financial and technical support. The financial support is a grant of 60k Euros (flat rate) for each beneficiary. The technical support is given by the DIHs whose services are included in the experiment. The technical support for the beneficiaries in the use of the federated services is valued up to 70k Euros.
See more information about the funding principle in section 2.1.7 of the “Guidelines for Applicants”.
What are the services for the selected experiments?
EUHubs4Data offers, through the federated catalogue, different services to the beneficiaries, provided by the DIHs composing the federation.
This catalogue is organized in a two-tier structure. The first filtering layer corresponds to the 4 types of services (1. AI, Analytics &Technology; 2. Business Development &Ecosystem Building; 3. Infrastructure Access; 4. Technology Consultancy and Training) while the second one corresponds to the different category for each type of service. For example, for the type 3 “Infrastructure Access” of services, the catalogue group the services in the following categories: (i) Big Data Infrastructures and Platforms, (ii) Computing and Storage Infrastructure, (iii) Data Management.
Check section 3.3 “Offering” of the “Guidelines for Applicants” for further information, and the corresponding section of EUHubs4Data webpage (https://euhubs4data.eu/services/) .
What kind of experiments are you looking for?
The objective of the experiments is that SMEs, start-ups or groups of web entrepreneurs make use of the services included in the federated catalogue, as well as the datasets, for the development of innovative products and solutions, or substantial improvement of existing ones, bringing them closer to the market. Aligned with this global objective, experiments are expected to:
- Involve at least, two data driven services from the EUHubs4Data federated catalogue, provided, at least, by two different DIHs.
- Make use of the datasets included in the federated catalogue, and, if possible, generate additional ones during the execution of the experiment.
- Apply these federated services and datasets to solve specific problems, overcome barriers or achieve challenges that cannot be attained (or at least in a much more difficult way) without the use of those services, in relevant sectors of the European economy.
- Achieve specific KPIs in terms of data driven innovation and fitness to market.
- Achieve Key Exploitable Results (KER) that could be delivered to market in the form of an innovative data driven product or service.
Where does the funding come from?
The funds come from the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme. Funding is given in the scope of EUHubs4Data project in the form of Financial Support to Third Parties and regulated under a Sub-Grantee Agreement signed by the selected beneficiaries and the EUHubs4Data coordinator.
Is there any support for applicants without a selected idea?
How does the funding mechanism work?
The aid provided is relying on a cascade-funding scheme involving H2020 funds. The scheme is based on a Grant Agreement signed by the European Commission and the EUHubs4Data Consortium partners. The Consortium partners as such receive the H2020 funds, part of which will be transferred in the form of Financial Support to Third Parties to the selected beneficiaries in the open calls, and based on the rules and regulations explained in the “Guidelines for Applicants” available at our website.
What if I secure funds from other national or regional authorities for the same project?
The funds of the project come from the H2020 Programme. This means its regulation will apply to the funds. If you get additional public funding from other entities, it will be your responsibility to assure the compatibleness of the different sources of funding.
Besides this, remember that double funding with EUHubs4Data is not allowed. The work you plan to carry out as part of your EUHubs4Data experiment cannot receive double funding. Synergies with other sources of funding are welcome as long as the grants are used for complementary tasks and not overlapping purposes.
HOW TO PARTICIPATE
Who is eligible in the calls?
The accepted applicants for EUHubs4Data open calls are SMEs (including start-ups) and group of individuals (web entrepreneurs):
- SME: Individual SME legally established in an eligible country as described below.
- Group of individuals: When there is not a constituted SME, the applicants could be a group between 2 to 4 individuals legally established in an eligible country (as described below) and with a written commitment to have set up a legally registered SME if their experiment reach the funds.
A SME will be considered as such if accomplishing with the Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC and the SME user guide. As a summary, the criteria which define a SME are:
- Headcount in Annual Work Unit (AWU) less than 250.
- Annual turnover less or equal to €50 million or annual balance sheet total, less or equal to €43 million.
Only applicants legally established, and working, in the case of the individuals, in any of the following countries will be eligible:
- The Member States (MS) of the European Union (EU), including their outermost regions;
- The Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) linked to the Member States;
H2020 Associated countries: according to the updated list published by the EC at http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/grants_manual/hi/3cpart/h2020-hi-list-ac_en.pdf
Due to BREXIT, is there any effect for UK companies or individuals to be able to apply to EUHubs4Data Open Calls?
UK applicants are eligible under the Withdrawal Agreement, as UK will continue to participate in programmes funded under the current 2014-2020 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) until their closure.
Are proposals coming from Russian entities eligible?
Regarding the current Russian-Ukrainian war, the European Commission has taken sides with Ukraine and decided:
- not to engage into further cooperation projects with Russian entities,
- put on hold the signing of any new contracts until further notice, and
- suspend any payment to Russian entities under existing contracts.
In accordance with this statement, EUHubs4Data will not finance proposals from applicants (SMES or group of web entrepreneurs) with residency/established in Russia. This does also apply to proposals from a team of web entrepreneurs with one team members resident or established in Russia. You can find the statement of the European Commission here.
(EUHubs4Data reserves the right to adjust these conditions according to changes in EU laws/directives/regulations)
I am Russian with residence in one of the European Member States, can I apply for the EUHubs4Data Open Call #3?
Yes. Russians with residency in one of the European Member States are welcome to participate in EUHubs4Data Open Call #3 submitting a proposal as “group of web entrepreneurs”.
(EUHubs4Data reserves the right to adjust these conditions according to changes in EU laws/directives/regulations)
How do I apply?
The online submission platform provided by the EUhubs4Data partner DIGITAL SME ALLIANCE is the entry point for all proposals. The platform is available at https://euh4d.digitalsme.eu/. Submissions received by any other channel will be automatically discarded.
Remember to read the “Guidelines for Applicants”to get all the information you need to apply successfully.
What type of experiment are you looking for? Which should be the goal of the experiment?
The objective of the experiments is that SMEs, start-ups or groups of web entrepreneurs make use of the services included in the federated catalogue, as well as the datasets, for the development of innovative products and solutions, or substantial improvement of existing ones, bringing them closer to the market. Aligned with this global objective, experiments are expected to:
- Involve a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 5 data-driven services from the federated catalogue (see section 3.1), provided by a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 3 different DIHs, where at least one DIH comes from a different country than the one of the applicant. It is expected that the experiment proposes the use of a combination of services (coming from different DIHs) that complement each other, in order to benefit from a more advanced service not available in the individual offer of the DIHs.
- Apply the combination of services from the federated catalogue to solve specific problems, overcome barriers or achieve challenges that cannot be attained (or at least in a much more difficult way) without the use of those services. See the subsection 1.1 of the “Guidelines for Applicants” for more information.
- Make use of at least one dataset (from the catalogue or external), and, if possible, generate additional ones during the execution of the experiment.
- Achieve Key Exploitable Results (KER) that could be delivered to market in the form of innovative data driven product or service.
- Contribute to the KPIs of the EUHubs4Data project. See the subsection 1.2 of the “Guidelines for Applicants” for more information.
Read the section 3.1 of the “Guidelines for Applicants” for more detailed information.
How do I involve the EUHubs4Data offer within my experiment?
The EUHubs4Data consortium have published a federated catalogue provided by the different DIHs of the EUHubs4Data federation. The federated catalogue is divided in two different catalogues:
- A catalogue of data-driven services, from which the experiments should involve, a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 5 services provided by a minimum of 2 and a maximum of 3 different DIHs.
- A catalogue of open datasets, where there is no indication/restriction of how to involve them in the experiment. Please be aware that experiments should involve, at least one dataset. However, it is not mandatory to involve open datasets from the federated catalogue, an experiment could involve an external dataset and it would be still eligible.
For further information, please see the section 3.3 of the “Guidelines for Applicants” and pay attention to the section 3.3.3, which highlights the importance of making an appropriate dimensioning of the demand of services.
What is considered a good dimensioning?
The EUhubs4Data project considers that an appropriate dimensioning of the offer implies a trade-off between 3 different requirements:
- Complementarity of the offer: it is expected that the experiment proposes the use of a combination of services (coming from different DIHs) that complement each other, to benefit from a more advanced service not available in the individual offer of the DIHs.
The involvement of services to carry out isolated tasks of the experiment will compromise the appropriate dimensioning of the experiment.
- The offer fit the demand: it is expected that the selected services fit the experiment execution and demonstrate a relevant contribution to the experiment goals and results.
The involvement of services that are not clearly contributing to a clear technical gap will compromise the appropriate dimensioning of the experiment.
- The demand fit the available resources: it is expected that an applicant demand of set of services (from 2 to 5) that require a technical support from the corresponding DIHs valued at a maximum of €000 for all services together. Therefore, experiments should consider at the proposal stage that the selected services require a technical support for the corresponding DIHs that is feasible to be offered with the maximum available resources (€70.000 for each experiment).
The oversized demand for services that involves an effort that clearly exceeds the available resources (valued in €70.000 per experiment) will compromise the appropriate dimensioning of the experiment.
For further information, please see the whole subsection 3.3.3 of the “Guidelines for Applicants”.
Can I involve external resources in my experiment?
As long as the experiment fulfill the eligibility criteria (see section 2.4.1.2 of the “Guidelines for Applicants”), applicants can also bring additional resources in the form of external datasets for the execution of their experiment.
Additionally, the generation of new datasets within the experiment is highly encouraged by the EUHubs4Data and will be taken into account in the evaluation of the experiment (see evaluation criteria in the section 2.4.1.3 of the “Guidelines for Applicants”).
Can I submit several experiments?
Only one proposal can be accepted for funding per SME or team of individuals and per call.
Also, only one proposal per applicant will be accepted for evaluation. However, this proposal could be submitted as many times as needed until the deadline, for example for correcting errors or improving the proposal. In the case of multiple resubmissions of a proposal by a SME or team, the last version submitted through the online submission platform (timestamp of the system) will enter our evaluation process.
If an SME is detected creating different accounts in the online submission platform to submit different proposals under the same SME, all proposals will be declared as non-eligible.
In the case of group of web entrepreneurs (individuals):
- The same individuals forming a team will be selected for funding only once, as in the case of an SME.
- Only one submitted proposal by the same individuals forming a team will be evaluated, as in the case of an SME.
- If an individual is detected participating in several teams, all the proposals where this individual participates, will declared non-eligible.
What are your funding criteria?
For detailed information on the eligibility evaluation and selection criteria, see sections 2.4.1.2, 2.4.1.3 and 2.4.1.4 of the “Guidelines for Applicants”.
What are the deadlines for the Open Calls?
Three open calls were defined in the framework of the EUhubs4Data project. The first two open calls are already closed. Open Call #1 was opened in December 2020 and Open Call #2 was opened in September 2021. first two.
The official dates for the Open Call #3 are:
- Call opening on 07/09/2022
- Deadline for submission before 09/11/2022, 17.00 CET
There will not be deadline extensions unless a major problem, caused by EUHubs4Data and not by the proposers, makes the system unavailable.
Further information about the calendar of the Open Call #3 is available on the “Guidelines for Applicants”.
Are you sharing any information about my proposal?
Yes. A summary of the proposals and the participants’ information will be shared with the EC. Moreover, we will publish an Open Dataset with the beneficiaries of our open call including their basic information data and funding received in our project website.
All the information that will be made public is clearly indicated in the official documentation of the call. Unless you agree on that, no technical insights will be published anywhere.
When filling up the application, should I fill all the fields?
All questions are mandatory to be completed except questions 25 and 28. Mandatory questions are indicated with an asterisk in the “template for the application form” and the online form will not enable you to submit the proposal if all mandatory questions are filled. Even though, in the case it would be possible, to not complete the application form is a red flag that will make your proposal non-eligible.
Regarding the optional questions, question 25 is optional but evaluable while question 28 is optional and not evaluable. See more information regarding question 28 (how the experiment engages citizens) in section 3.1.1.3 of the “Guidelines for Applicants”.
What happens if I do not upload the files asked in the application form?
We ask for 3 files: (1) “Declaration of Honour” signed by a company representative; (2) “Declaration of Ethics Compliance” signed by a company representative; and (3) Commitment to set up a registered SME, whose template is available in the Annex 3 of the “sub-grant agreement template. Documents (1) and (2) are mandatory for all applicants. Document (3) is only mandatory in the case the applicants are a group of web entrepreneurs.
If the mandatory files are empty or incomplete, your proposal will be automatically discarded.
What if I need to change the answers to my application once submitted?
If the call deadline has not passed, you can submit a new version of the proposal if, for example, you discover an error or you need to change any answer in an eligible submitted proposal. For this purpose, you must request it to Open Call team through opencall@euhubs4data.eu, who will open again the application form. Once opened, you will be able to modify all questions of your application form. Please be aware that once opened, you should send again the form, or it will not be evaluated. Once resubmitted, only the last version received before the call deadline will be considered in the evaluation.
When will I hear back regarding my application?
It is estimated that applicant will receive a communication with the results of the Open Call #3 during January 2023. For more information about the calendar of the Open Call #3, see section 3.4 of the “Guidelines for Applicants”.
Can I apply to the 3rd call if I was not selected in the 1st or 2nd Call?
Yes, resubmission is allowed. If your experiment does not reach the funding, you can try again in the next open calls.
Besides, even if you have funded an experiment, you can propose another experiment in the following calls. However, if a beneficiary with a selected experiment fails to justify the expected results according to the set of milestones defined in the sub-grant agreement, the proposals submitted in the following calls will be declared as non-eligible. Besides, if the beneficiary has already a second experiment financed, the bad justification of a prior experiment will trigger the automatic cancellation of the funding for the second experiment.
How does a good team look like?
Question 32 of the Application Form (see a template here) asks for the CVs of up to 4 team members. Please make sure to include both technical and business profiles in your team to have a balanced and capable team.
Filling in Team Members #1 and #2 is mandatory. Filling in Team Members #3 and #4 is highly advisable.
SELECTED PARTICIPANTS
When are we going to be paid? Does EUHubs4Data consider pre-financing for the beneficiaries?
As a general rule, there will be no pre-financing for beneficiaries.
The financial support granted for each experiment (and beneficiary) will be 60.000 Euros. Payments will be executed according to the accomplishment of a set of expected milestones that will help to monitor the progress of the experiment. The supervision of the milestones will be performed in two justification periods:
- Intermediate review: 30.000 Euros. [M05 after starting the experiments]
- Final evaluation once the experiment is finished: 30.000 Euros. [M10 after starting the experiment]
The DIHs involved in the experiment will be the entities in charge of monitoring the accomplishment of the milestones. A positive assessment of DIHs is needed for the payment in each period. For more information about the milestones monitoring the success of the experiment see section 2.4.2.2 of the “Guidelines for Applicants”.
Do I have to keep track of my expenses for justifying the costs?
It is not necessary for this project since justification is results-driven. Payments are a flat rate, which are released if some conditions are met (check the previous question or the guidelines for applicants).
Payments are released if you achieve the expected results, which are monitored through a set of milestones that will be included in the sub-grant agreement (see section 2.4.2.2 of the guidelines for applicants).
Is it allowed for the beneficiary to change team members during the project?
If you participate as a team of individuals (web entrepreneurs), you have to stick to that team. Only new members can be added to improve the team but not to change the initial team.
If you are participating as an SME, you are free to add new employees from the firm to the team. Notice that the people included in the proposal must be later involved in the execution. The team could be extended with new members, but the core team included in the proposal should be maintained as you have been awarded based on this group of experts. In case of justified reason, a member could be replaced by another expert with a similar profile.
What about the property of any app/tool/software developed within the experiment?
Experiments are expected to result in close-to-market solutions (products/services). You are free to decide the type of licensing you will provide. Just consider the data you are using to build your product (mock-up/MVP/etc.) might have copyright restrictions you will need to sort out with the DIH providing the data.
Can the results obtained during the project be published in a research paper?
There is no problem to publish papers with the results, providing you give details about your IPR. Beware that if you disclose snippets of the dataset you might need permission from its owner, i.e. DIH.
ANY QUESTION?
If you need any further assistance please contact us by email or get in touch with us through our social media.
