CORDIS, the Community Research and Development Information Service, has just launched a new Partners Service, designed to help users to promote expertise and organisations, find business or research partners, create groups, join networks and find the right components for funding bids and proposals.

The new interactive platform combines a vast array of social media tools, CORDIS resources and back-office technologies. The aim is to provide a space where users can talk, debate and engage. Thus, the new service offers users the opportunity to build and expand networks. This can be done via participating in discussions, offering support in on-line groups or creating cross-disciplinary networks. The service provides the tools to users, allowing them to create and build according to their own needs as a group.

Among the characteristics, a focal point of the new service is an online profile, which has significant room for them to feature expertise, knowledge and work. Another important characteristic of the new service is the possibility for users to form partnerships. With links to official information sources, basic data will be uploaded when funding opportunities are announced. This will help participants to discuss and review their ideas and proposals with one another ahead of submission deadlines.

In addition, the new platform intends to reduce the time finding the right people or entities to perform specialised work or even comply with funding requirements can take significant amounts of time. The new service aims to shorten this process by using an automated matching system that brings together data and hundreds of partnership requests supplied by companies, research-related entities and universities across Europe and around the world.