Developments in European information issues: Networks and relays – Services – Products, January 2002

R&D Developments

One of the Spanish Presidency's priorities is the final adoption of the Sixth Framework Programme (FP6). CORDIS has gone live with an improved and redesigned information service at http://www.cordis.lu/rtd2002/ to chart the progress towards FP6 agreement. As well as key documents, position papers, discussion and links, it also reflects developments in debate on the European research area (ERA).

Within these pages, a new online service is also offered which focuses on science and technology foresight and the future of European research. See http://www.cordis.lu/rtd2002/foresight/home.html to test the service. It lists key national players involved in a variety of foresight activities, current co-operation and visions for the future. An online forum is planned to gather opinions on scientific and technical foresight activities. The search engine will search across the whole of the rtd2002 site

Technology Marketplace

Also on CORDIS at http://www.cordis.lu/marketplace/ is the new virtual Technology Marketplace, which aims to match people with technology to facilitate exploitation of R&D results. It shows good examples of the latest technologies resulting from European research and enables users to browse through potentially exploitable projects under three main groups: business, science and society. Within a section, hits can be limited by specifying a domain from: biology/medicine, energy, environment, IT - telecommunications, or industrial technology. Substantial outlines of the results are provided together with contact details. An alternative approach is through the search facility where there is a choice to look for offers, results, projects or items from CORDIS focus Results. The group or domain can be selected and one or more search term, or a phrase, entered. Local sources of support from the Innovation Relay Centre Network are listed

TECIS Helpdesk

Team Europe, Carrefours and Info-Points Service (TECIS) is charged with supporting three of the networks which come under the umbrella of DG Press and Communication. Although European Documentation Centres also come within the remit of DG Press and Communication, they are not covered by the TECIS Helpdesk. TECIS currently consists of nine members of staff and has been set up for one year, renewable for a further two years. Among the support duties of TECIS staff will be the provision of enquiry “hotlines”, maintenance of the web site and useful links, distribution of information, advice on using information sources, organising training and an annual meeting, an exchange programme for members, developing the Intranet and discussion forum, compiling a compendium of best practice, monitoring and evaluating services, maintaining directories of members and promoting the networks. The beneficiaries of these support services will be the TECIS members: the Team Europe network of conference speakers specialising in EU topics now runs to some 535 individuals, and five new Info-Points and five new Carrefours are due to be launched, bringing the totals to 143 and 135 respectively with further expansion foreseen.

The TECIS web site is available at http://www.tecis.be/index.html/. Although access to the main part of the site is password controlled for members only, the directory and newsletter, InfoTECIS, are freely available. European Documentation Centres as well as TECIS members will be interested in the feature in InfoTECIS volume 1 on Ms Fabrizia de Rosa, new head of unit responsible for the relay networks within DG Press and Communication. There is no comment in this issue, the launch issue (Volume 0) of November 2001, or the now published January issue about the reasoning behind the exclusion of EDCs from the TECIS remit. The Directory, dated 6 December 2001, is available as a pdf document and gives full contact details and e-mail addresses for Info-Points and Carrefours, Team Europe and Team Europe Co-ordinators.