Appendix A to Annex I
for RTD Projects and other Actions established
within the Information Access & Filtering (IAF) area of Key Action III

Action Line III.4.1 – Semantic Web Technologies

1.  Foreword

This Appendix is an integral part of Annex I – Description of work, as agreed between the Consortium and the European Commission (EC).  It sets out a number of practical provisions and operational timescales regarding management and progress reports, including yearly public reports; deliverables and activities relating to project- and programme-level awareness and dissemination; periodic peer reviews; and concertation and project-clustering activities.  Some or all of these activities, reports and events may be addressed elsewhere in Annex I. 

The amount of the EU financial contribution set out in the Contract is inclusive of funds destined to cover any costs incurred by the Contractors in the performance of the tasks detailed in this Appendix.

In the event of any conflict between this Appendix and Annex III – Special Conditions for the IST Programme, the latter shall take precedence.

2.  Project Documentation

The Contractors undertake

• To provide a brief project Fact Sheet suitable for web publishing, within one month from the start of the project, and to maintain and update it until the Contract expiry date.  The Fact Sheet will outline the project rationale and objectives, specify the project’s technical baseline and intended target groups and application domains, and detail intermediate and final outputs.  Said Fact Sheet will be used by the Commission for its own dissemination and awareness activities throughout the project lifecycle, and will be published on EC and EC sponsored websites.
• To set up a project Website within three months from the start of the project, and to maintain and update it until the Contract expiry date.  Said site will provide project overviews and highlights; up-to-date information on intermediate and final project results, including public reports and synthesis reports drawn from selected confidential material; project events, including e.g. user group meetings, conferences and workshops; contact details, etc.  The Website will be cross-linked from/to other relevant EC and EC sponsored sites.
• To provide at the latest by the first peer review (see 3. below), a comprehensive MS-PowerPoint or HTML Presentation detailing all the key features of the project. A final, augmented version of this Presentation will be transmitted to the Commission together with the project's final report, and will where appropriate contain additional multimedia assets (e.g. video clips).  Said Presentation will be used by the Commission for its own dissemination and awareness activities, during and after the completion of the project, and will where appropriate be published on EC and EC sponsored websites, and other electronic publications.
• To supply at the latest by the date of submission of the final report a web enabled (or CD/DVD based) Showcase, and to grant the Commission the right to use said Showcase for its own dissemination and awareness activities, including web based and electronic publications, after the completion of the project. The Showcase will feature a meaningful subset (software, data, etc.) of the functionality characterising the project demonstrator(s) arrived at, along with relevant copyright notices and contact information, and suitable installation aids and run-time interfaces.

Item (d) above applies to projects and other actions which are intended to produce runnable software and/or electronic datasets and do not use technical platforms (e.g. non-standard hardware, pre-requisite commercial software) which would make the Showcase unsuitable for use in a normal web or office/exhibition environment.

3.  Peer Reviews

All the actions (including RTD projects, accompanying measures, thematic networks, working groups, etc.) established within the IAF area of Key Action III will in principle undergo one peer Review in each calendar year.  As a general rule, no Reviews will be held in the first 10 months of implementation of the action.

Section 2 of Annex III sets out the provisions governing the technical verification procedure in RTD, demonstration and combined projects.

4.  Reporting to the Project Officer

The Co-ordinator undertakes to produce the following Reports in the English language on behalf of the Consortium, and to forward them to the EC Project Officer according to the following conditions and timescales.

Note:  All timings are relative to T1 (project start date); Tn denotes the project end date; both dates as defined in the first indent of Article 2 of the Contract.

Due Date	Title	Coverage	Distribution
T3, T9, T15, …	Quarterly management reports	Brief report summarising main achievements, activities and events in the reporting period, including where appropriate problems, delays etc. encountered. To be drawn up according to a template supplied by the EC.	Project Officer and Peer Reviewers
T6, T12, T18, …	Semestrial progress reports (as defined in Article 4 of the General Conditions)	Detailed overview of the work completed/launched in the reporting period, resources employed, departures from the work schedule, and plans for the next phase. Combined with deliverables due in the reporting period and corresponding cost statements.	Project Officer and Peer Reviewers
15 November in each calendar year	Annual public reports	For a broad public outside the consortium. To document the main results obtained and promote the objectives of the project. Designed for web publishing according to a template provided by the EC.	Public
Tn+2	Final report	To describe in detail all the work carried out and the results obtained under the Contract. Together with the end-of-project deliverables, including the technology implementation plan, it will be a means to assess the output of the project. A non-public part will include a.o. technical documentation, results arising from tests and assessments, prospects for further development and deployment, and exploitation plans. A chapter of the final report  will assess the portability of the results arrived at and their scalability and suitability for other tasks and domains.	Public synthesis report. Main report reserved to Project Officer and Peer Reviewers

The Final Report will be accompanied by a CD-ROM, or an equivalent digital storage medium, containing all the contractual reports and other 'paper-based' deliverables (e.g. market analyses, system specifications, test results, technology implementation plan, etc.), for long-term secure storage in the Commission archives.

5.  Meetings

The Contractors will ensure adequate representation at the following Meetings:

Frequency	Type of meeting	Purpose	Participants	Venue
1	Project Kick-off meeting	To launch the project and refine plans and arrangements for the first 3-6 months of work. Where appropriate, to meet and exhange non-confidential information with representatives of Support Projects (cf. section 6) and other related RTD projects.	Consortium members, Project Officer, IAF management	Luxembourg
Up to 4 per calendar year	Progress meeting	To review progress and discuss any significant problems and deviations.	Co-ordinator and Project Officer	2/year in Luxembourg; up to 2/year elsewhere, in connection with Consortium meetings
1 per calendar year	Peer Review meet­ing	To evaluate intermediate and final results. To assess quality, impact and effectiveness of project work.	Co-ordinator and relevant  workpackage leaders,  Project Officer, Peer Reviewers	Luxembourg; where possible coupled with Concertation meeting
1 per calendar year	Concertation meeting	To present work in progress and demonstrate intermediate results. To identify and discuss areas of common interest. To plan joint investigations and dis­semination activities. See section 6.	Coordinators of IAF consortia and/or workpackage leaders, plus external experts, suppliers and users  where ap­propriate	Luxembourg; elsewhere where dictated by practical and technical constraints
1 per calendar year	Programme Conference and Exhibition	To actively participate in discussions and demonstrations organised by the IST programme.	Co-ordinator and/or workpackage leaders	Tbd

6.  Clustering and Concertation

To enhance the overall value and coherence of RTD work, and its relevance to European and worldwide developments, the Commission intends to put in motion a number of Support Projects addressing e.g. best practice and standards work; pan-European network(s) of excellence encompassing technology foresight and research roadmaps, cross-disciplinary training and technology transfer in the IAF field; and information exchanges between IAF projects and with other relevant projects and laboratories.

The Contractors may be invited to contribute to and participate in periodic concertation meetings or special interest groups organised by these and other forthcoming Support Projects. 

Further provisions relating to concertation and information exchange and dissemination are detailed in section 1 of Annex III – Special Conditions.