EU Grant Novelty Scoring
Know if your idea has already been funded — before you spend months writing the proposal. CriteriaI checks your objectives against 55,000+ funded EU research projects using semantic AI, not keyword matching.
WHY IT MATTERS
Evaluators check novelty first. So should you.
Horizon Europe evaluators are required to assess whether a proposal offers genuine novelty beyond the state of the art. Proposals that closely duplicate existing funded work are penalised — even if the science is excellent.
The problem is that “state of the art” in EU research funding means 55,000+ funded projects across hundreds of topics. No human can review all of them. Most applicants search CORDIS manually, find a handful of relevant projects, and hope they haven't missed anything. That hope is often misplaced.
CriteriaI searches the entire funded landscape semantically — finding conceptually similar projects even when they use completely different terminology.
HOW NOVELTY SCORING WORKS
Semantic similarity, not keyword matching
Your proposal is embedded
Your objectives are converted into a high-dimensional vector using the same AI model that indexed every funded project in the database. This captures meaning, not just words.
Semantic search across 55,000+ projects
A two-stage vector search finds the most conceptually similar funded projects. The first stage retrieves candidates, the second re-ranks them with a publications relevance boost for higher precision.
AI analyses the overlap
An LLM examines your proposal alongside the most similar funded projects and produces a novelty score with a written rationale — highlighting exactly where you overlap and where you offer genuine new ground.
WHAT YOU LEARN
From score to strategy
Which projects overlap with yours
See the 10-15 most similar funded projects with similarity percentages, funding amounts, and direct links to CORDIS. No guessing — you can read the actual project objectives and deliverables.
Where your novelty lies
The report identifies the specific aspects of your proposal that are genuinely new — the angles that no funded project has explored. Use these as the backbone of your novelty argument.
How to strengthen your differentiation
Deep evaluation provides an improvement checklist with concrete suggestions for sharpening your novelty claims. Most proposals improve significantly after 2-3 iterations using this feedback loop.
FAQ
Novelty scoring questions
The next Horizon Europe deadline
is closer than you think.
Start with 3 free evaluations. No credit card. No setup. Just paste your objectives.
Evaluate your proposal freeKnow your proposal's competitive position before you submit.