Call 2021 – FAQ for Funded Projects

Yes, as was indicated in the Call Announcement it is requested that each project operates under a consortium agreement addressing the following topics at least:

• Internal organisation and management of the consortium
• Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) arrangements
• Data management
• General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
• Settlement of internal disputes

This document has to be signed by all partners and sent to QuantERA Coordination Office no later than three months after the start of a project. Please note that some Funding Agencies require that the Consortium Agreement is signed before the contract can be finalised.

The consortium agreement is written by the consortium of the project, without QuantERA’s intervention. You can start from the DESCA model usually used for Horizon 2020 or Horizon Europe projects, and modify it to fit your needs.

Yes. For monitoring purposes, QuantERA will run two monitoring surveys and require two progress reports of each consortium: one at mid-term (guide available here) and one at the end of the project duration. A written reports (mid-term and final) are complemented by oral presentations during the Mid-term and Final Review Seminar. Project Coordinators must participate in the Mid-term and Final Review seminars to reflect the progress/achievement in the projects, along with the impact and next steps in their research.

According to the rules of the European Commission, we kindly remind you of the necessity of acknowledgement in each publication (job advertisement, articles, presentations, posters, websites, patent applications, etc.) resulting from the project that the research was carried out within the QuantERA Programme.

Any dissemination of results should display the EU emblem and include the text about EU funding.

You can acknowledge the support of QuantERA in your publications as follows:

“This project funded within the QuantERA II Programme that has received funding from the EU H2020 research and innovation programme under GA No 101017733”

Or

“This project funded within the QuantERA II Programme that has received funding from the EU H2020 research and innovation programme under GA No 101017733, and with funding organisations XXX, XXX, XXX and XXX.”

The number of cited funding organisations will depend on the number of project partners that contributed to the publication.

EU emblem should be included in the acknowledgements whenever permitted. However, if publishing the logo is against the general approach used by the scientific journal in question and as a result, the EU logo cannot be included in the publication, please note that QuantERA may require a statement explaining that including the logo was not possible.

Please be aware that the above rules are obligatory and information about financing the project within the QuantERA Programme has to be included in every publication. Please also remember that some of the Research Funding Organisations have additional guidelines that should be followed in this regard and the actual individual grants should be acknowledged in publications in the way required by them.

In addition, in any visual presentations (e.g. power point presentations, posters, etc.) we encourage you to use the logo of QuantERA, as well as the logos of the relevant funding organisations.

Additional reporting obligations need to be fulfilled on the national/regional levels with regard to your respective Funding Agencies and according to your national/regional regulations.

QuantERA Consortium considers providing free online access to the published peer-reviewed articles to be the most effective way of ensuring that the research it supports can be accessed and used as the basis for further research.

While the existing policies at the national/regional level should be respected at all times by the investigators of the funded research projects, a common approach for all projects funded through QuantERA II Call are instituted, based on what is recommended by the EC and eligible according to the national/regional regulations.

According to the Horizon 2020 regulation on Open Access, all publications resulting from the Programme must be published via green or gold open access, with exceptions for confidentiality, security or personal data, as long as it is eligible according to the national/regional funding rules. Gold open access is provided by quite a few journals in the concerned domain and the QuantERA II funding can be used by the researchers to pay the corresponding fees as long as it is permitted at the national level). Within the QT field of research, green open access is usually allowed by most of the journal editors, in some cases with an embargo period (if in line with national/regional rules).

The QuantERA Consortium recognizes the www.arXiv.org server as a the established repository for publications resulting from research projects in the area of quantum science and technology. Please note, as scientific publications will be one of the principal modes of disseminating the results of QuantERA funded projects, it is planned that the QuantERA website will include a database of publications with links to the arXiv repository as well as Digital Object Identifier labels (www.doi.org) that will offer easy access to the project results.

Accordingly, please remember that you will be obligated, during the mid-term and final reporting periods, to submit a complete list of publications resulting from the project along with the respective DOI number and a link to the publication itself.

Please note that all activities raising ethical issues should be reported to the QuantERA Programme before their beginning along with:

• any ethics committee opinion required under national law and
• any notification or authorization for activities raising ethical issues required under national law.

The extension procedure is intended for Consortia of projects funded under Call 2021, who wish to request an extension of their duration. To extend your project, follow the requirements described in the Procedure.

All partners in the projects must be informed and agree on the changes. The final decision on the changes of PC/PI/institution implementing the project lies within the authority of the respective Research Funding Organization and must be granted formally on the national/ regional level.

Project Coordinator is obliged to notify the Call Secretariat about these changes.