As laid down in the MoU, the main objective of the Action is to launch and establish a cooperative network of researchers, practitioners, and application domain specialists working in fields related to semantic data management, the Semantic Web, information retrieval, artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing, that coordinates collaboration among them to enable research activity and technology transfer in the area of keyword-based search over structured data sources. This will allow coordinating and shaping the research efforts in this new and rapidly evolving research field. Four thematic areas will be addressed: 1) representation of structured data sources; 2) study and development of techniques for keyword search; 3) user interaction and keyword-based query interpretation; 4) research integration, showcases, benchmarks and evaluations. In the first year, we will lay the foundations for all the work will be carried out in the project. Therefore, the activities planned will mainly be oriented to pursue two objectives: a) the creation and the consolidation of a network of research groups interested in the action themes, and b) the definition of the hot research topics in the area of keyword-based search over structured data sources.

The creation and the consolidation of a network of research groups implies the definition of strategies for the enlargement of the network to academic and professional researchers beyond the ones initially involved for the preparation of the Action. This will naturally happen if KEYSTONE will provide real advantages to the participants in the research and knowledge transfer thanks to the activities and the idea sharing promoted by people involved in the Action, the research and training materials collected, and the outcomes provided by the research activities. The definition of rules and procedures for promoting and supporting a large active participation of researchers and practitioners constitutes one of the more critical objectives for KEYSTONE in the first year.