This week’s Spotlight contains information on how to locate documents at the Participant Portal. 

What are you looking for on the Participant Portal?

The new European Commission Research Participant Portal will from now on be the official place to look for Horizon 2020 documentation and the official guidance documents. The pages are still being populated and updated. So while the structure of what should be available in terms of documentation and guidance is already available, not all the documents have actually been uploaded yet. This is likely to happen over the coming days and weeks.

The Horizon 2020 calls for proposals:
The first set of Calls are available on the Participant Portal under “Funding opportunities”. There are a number of different ways to search for calls, including a keyword search.

Information on using the Participant Portal, submitting proposals, managing grants:
This type of guidance is going to be available on the Participant Portal under the name of “Horizon 2020 Online Manual” on the “How to participate” page. The structure with all topics to be included in this is already visible, however the actual guidance has not been uploaded yet. The Manual will also contain information for expert evaluators, and cross-cutting issues such as international co-operation, ethics and gender issues. The Manual can also be accessed via the list of “Reference Documents” under “How to Participate”.

Information on the legal and financial rules for Horizon 2020 projects:
This will be available under the “Reference Documents” section under “How to Participate”.

• The legal foundation of Horizon 2020 (including the Rules for Participation), under “Legal basis”.
• The Model Grant Agreement (MGA) for Horizon 2020 and the Annotated Model Grant Agreement provide the details on how the funding can and cannot be used.
• The Annotated MGA is still a work in progress. Only the MGA is signed for Horizon 2020 grants for now.

The European Research Council (ERC) Rules for the submission and evaluation:
These will be available under “Specific guidelines” in the list of reference documents.

Proposal templates and evaluation forms:
These are also available under “Reference Documents”, with individual templates for the different types of funded projects.