4.2.1. Use of the Platform: Filtering and Data Extraction Criteria

The H2020 dashboard [81] is an interactive platform that works on a series of tabs, enabling the collection and filtration of data on Horizon 2020, thus facilitating data sharing and access to information on the main European funding program. Thanks to the “H2020 funded projects” functionality, this platform provides detailed data on projects funded, not only by H2020 but also BBI, and returns a list of projects matching the filtering criteria used. For this reason, the authors of this study selected the H2020 dashboard as the most suitable platform to identify the main projects funded in the field of marine biotechnology for pharmaceutical and food applications [82].

In order to identify the largest number of relevant projects, three analyses were carried out in the same rigorous manner, one for each type of call previously identified as critical to the funding of marine biotechnology projects.

The tab selected was “H2020 projects”, since it provides a list of desired projects downloadable in Excel format with the following information: (1) title of project; (2) acronym of project; (3) thematic priority; (4) Number of participants in project; (5) Contribution received from program; (6) ToA (Type of Action); (7) Net contribution received by program; (8) project number; (9) link to CORDIS; (10) Topic code; (11) Description of topic. Moreover, in all three cases, the filter “Thematic priority” was used to select “Biotechnology” and “Food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine and maritime and inland water research” because they are related to marine biotechnology; the other topics were not considered relevant to the analysis.

A second filter “call ID” was then applied to select the projects funded under a specific call identified by a unique code. Different calls were selected according to the case:

Projects funded under the “Blue Growth” calls in all 3 WPs: 11 calls were selected with initial code H2020-BG (H2020-BG–2014-1; H2020-BG-2014-2; H2020-BG-2015-1; H2020-BG-2015-2; H2020-BG-2016-1; H2020-BG-2016-2; H2020-BG-2017-1; H2020-BG-2018-1; H2020-BG-2018-2; H2020-BG-2019-1; H2020-BG-2019-2) making a total of 55 projects.

Projects funded under the BBI: 7 calls were selected, including 3 with initial code H2020—BBI—PPP (H2020-BBI-PPP-2014-1; H2020-BBI-PPP-2015-1-2; H2020-BBI-PPP-2015-2-1) and 4 with code H2020-BBI-JTI (H2020-BBI-JTI-2016; H2020-BBI-JTI-2017; H2020-BBI-JTI-2018; H2020-BBI-JTI-2019) making a total of 203 projects.

Projects funded through a phase 2 SME Instrument: 3 calls were selected with initial code H2020-SMEINST (H2020-SMEINST-2-2014; H2020-SMEINST-2-2015; H2020—SMEINST-2-2016–2017) making a total of 97 projects. In this case, it was decided not to consider phase 1 projects, since this funding is reserved for assessing the technological and commercial feasibility of a product or technology.