FAQs

In accordance with Annex K of the Horizon 2020 Work Programme 2018, the maximum amount of financial support to be provided to each Third Party cannot exceed 60.000 euro (sixty thousand euro).

This limit applies cumulatively across all the StandICT.eu 2023 Open calls and the overall budget of 2,850,000 (two million, eight hundred and fifty thousand euro) earmarked for Financial Support to Third Parties (Article 137 of the Financial Regulation No 966/2012).

The 10 cycles of Open Calls will be focused around the macro-areas of the key orientations of the Strategic Plan in the Horizon Europe Framework Programme.

View the full list of topics for the current Open Call on the StandICT.eu 2023 Open Call page

Potential applicants are standardisation specialists, defined as professionals with proven expertise and experience in standardisation activities e.g. previous contributions to standards developments, participation in various SDO groups, previous or current chairs etc in the respective priority area.

Individuals or natural persons residing in the European Member States and Associate Countries from both public and private sectors, industry and service companies including SMEs and start-ups, academia and research, and national and European associations, including NGOs representing consumers interests.

In particular, the target of StandICT.eu open calls are European Experts who:

• have profound knowledge in one of the priority areas covered by the Open Calls;
• have experience regarding developments of standards, e.g., in SDOs, , in groups set-up by the EC, or when creating documentation in open source developments;
• are not receiving support from other instruments (PPPs, EU or national R&I projects) for the proposed activities, and are not being funded from other sources for an identical activity.

In order to be eligible to apply for contributions applicants must reside/work in Europe or Associate Member Countries.

The proposals will also have to clearly demonstrate:

• Added value to existing SDO activities;
• Impact of work on European interests and the standard in question;
• Expertise of the applicant in the respective priority area;
• Expertise of the applicant in standardisation, e.g. previous contributions to standards developments, participation in other groups working on architectures, APIs, guidelines in the respective priority area

Please note that for the benefit of doubt, experts applying for participation and/or contributions to NSOs or ESOs will normally be rejected during the evaluation phase, unless clear evidence is shown that the former is relevant or linked to a broader international cooperation or initiative in which the NSO or the ESO takes part.

Each proposal will be evaluated based on the 4-criterion given below, with a scoring from 1 to 10 and the weighting indicated:

Criteria 1: Soundness of the proposal and foreseen impact on the Open Call topic (30%);

Criteria 2: Technical excellence & adherence to the Open Call topics (30%);

Criteria 3: Experience and qualifications of the applicant (20%);

Criteria 4: Economics of the proposal (20%).

The final scoring and ranking will be automatically determined by averaging the scores provided by three independent members of the StandICT.eu 2023 External Pool of Evaluators.

The proposals final scoring and the ranking final score will be automatically determined by averaging scores provided by the 3 independent evaluators.

You can submit the proposal but with the risk of this being ranked lower by the evaluators. However, StandICT.eu 2023 will review all incoming proposals and if we agree on the relevance to the DSM, this may be included in a later call with topics that capture your suggestions.

StandICT.eu 2023 will run 10 Open Call cycles. Each call will be open for 60 days and will be followed by a 30-day evaluation period.

• Launch of the 1st Open Call: 2nd of November 2020
• Deadline for submitting applications: 4th January 2021, 17.00 CET
• Evaluation: The proposals evaluation will be carried out by the External Pool of Evaluators, the estimated duration will be of 30 days
• Notification: Applicants will be notified of the outcome of their applications by the end of January

Subsequent Open Calls will follow a similar timeline. For up to date information about each specific call follow communications on this website and on our Twitter channel

An indication of the launch dates for Calls #2 to Call #10 is as follows.

Open Call #2 - January 2021

Open Call #3 - March 2021

Open Call #4 - July 2021

Open Call #5 - September 2021

Open Call #6 - November 2021

Open Call #7 - March 2022

Open Call #8 - May 2022

Open Call #9 - July 2022

Open Call #10 - September 2022

If your proposal was not selected for funding in an Open Call it will not be automatically included in the pool of applications to subsequent calls.

If you wish your proposal to be considered for funding under a subsequent call you can this again. We strongly suggest that you take the feedback provided by the Evaluators in the Evalution Consensus Report into account to improve your and modify the proposal before re-submission to improve your chances.

Also, please check the topics of the call as the topics of a subsequent call may differ from the ones the proposal was submitted to.

StandICT.eu 2023 has a mandate to provide the financial support available to individual specialists and therefore applications from organisations are not eligible for funding.

There are no such limitations. The project can only support individuals but multiple applications from the same organisation or research group are welcome

The proposals should be submitted by individuals and the activities covered by the proposal should be performed by the applicant. The proposal can reference the fact that is part of a collaborative effort but costs cannot be claimed for any other participants except the applicant.

Eligible costs are personal effort up to the maximum eligible EU daily expert rate of 450 Euro; travel, SSO or SDO membership fees or registration to an event . If you have doubts about a specific type of cost, please feel free to contact us to make sure it is eligible.

There is no requirement to present a cost statement. Successful applicants that have signed a contract with StandICT.eu 2023 will receive a Payment Request Form from the team directly after completion of the relevant milestone to be signed and returned with bank details.

We understand that there may be limitations imposed by the specific SDO’s rules of engagement. We encourage individual membership but where this is not available, that of the organisational may be accepted providing this is well justified.

Please note that, in general, the third-party funding provided in the framework of the StandICT.eu 2023 fellowships is provided gross of any taxes or duties that may be due for payment in accordance with your national tax regulations, should this count as income in your country of tax residence. Therefore, you should consult your local tax authority, or accountant, as to whether any taxes or other duties are applicable to the funding received from StandICT.eu 2023. StandICT.eu 2023 cannot assume any liability, charge, responsibility or lien for the payment of any taxes or duties on the third-part funding provided, which lies solely with the fellow. Any travel budget, generally not considered as income (again, it is to you to check this with your local tax authority) not utilised due to Covid restrictions and possibly devolved to effort or other activities may also become subject to taxation as a consequence and StandICT.eu 2023 cannot assume any liability, charge, responsibility or lien related to its payment.

Do you have a question that has not been answered in this FAQ? Please send it to info@standict.eu.

To apply to the ongoing Open Call visit the specific page

All applications must support an EU wide activity for the benefit of European society and well-being.