Author: Gabriella Lovasz
All beneficiaries are obliged to disseminate the project results unless it goes against their legitimate interests. Therefore, researchers often dislike dissemination and communication aspects during the proposal writing or implementation phase.
Certainly, it could be challenging to identify the most appropriate means for disseminating your project results (including scientific publications) and think of ways to provide open access and protect your data at the same time.
Luckily, the EC has recognized that many beneficiaries face such challenges and therefore, there are plenty of tools that help you build the most efficient strategy.
The European Commission can help raise your profile through several freely accessible communication channels.
Whether your project is organising a public event, a press demonstration or has just delivered a set of exciting results: the European Commission may be able to help you spread the word!
Pro tip: Do not forget to inform your project officer about interesting topics, news and events concerning your project – they will be able to further promote these as well!
Relatively new channels and tools
Horizon Results Platform
The Horizon Results Platform (HRP) is a repository of Key Exploitable Results (KER) of EU-funded research and innovation projects. As the EC promotes it: “Whether you are a policymaker, an investor, an entrepreneur, a researcher, an innovation, legal, business development or financing expert, or any interested citizen, this is the place where you can discover the wealth of EU-funded research results and get in contact with their creators!” Any running or finished project can upload their results to this platform through their F&T portal project account.
Dissemination Booster (Horizon Results Booster)
The Horizon Results Booster is an initiative funded by the European Commission and run by META Group-led partnership. The initiative aims to maximise the impact of research projects funded by FP7, Horizon 2020, and Horizon Europe. It provides free guidance on best disseminating and exploiting your research results. If you are interested to see what this initiative offers throughout three modules and want to sign in, click here.
Open Research Europe
This tool was officially launched only in 2021, and you definitely want to explore it further if you work with scientific publications! Open Research Europe is an open access publishing platform that beneficiaries can use to publish any research results coming from R&I funded programmes, and it is in line with the EU’s open science policy. An editorial team will review the article upon submission to ensure that policies and ethical guidelines are adhered to, and an open peer review and article revision will follow. ORI publish their news and latest articles on their Twitter profile @OpenResearch_EU, where you can follow them for more updates.
European IP Helpdesk
The IP Helpdesk is the continuation of the IPR Helpdesk, now fully embedded into the Europa Portal. The European IP Helpdesk supports European SMEs and research teams involved in cross-border business and/or EU-funded research activities to manage, disseminate and valorise their IP. Offering a broad range of informative material, a Helpline service for direct IP support, and on-site and online training, their main goal is to support IP capacity building along the full scale of IP practices: from awareness to strategic use and successful exploitation. We specifically recommend using the templates and guidelines as well as attending the training courses.
European Open Science Cloud
The European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is an environment for hosting and processing research data to support EU science. The ambition of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) is to provide European researchers, innovators, companies, and citizens with a federated and open multi-disciplinary environment where they can publish, find and re-use data, tools and services for research, innovation, and educational purposes. You may decide to contribute to EOSC already in the proposal writing stage.
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Europa Media is trying to benefit from all these tools and some of them were discussed during a joint webinar with EMDESK on the topic of "How to disseminate successfully EU-funded project results". Here you can find the Q&A catalogue published after the webinar - feel free to connect and ask anything that interests you regarding dissemination and communication channels.
