Author: Maria Beatriz Rosell
If you are a project coordinator, you will probably have to deal with one task related to scientific publications. Usually, the partner leading communication and dissemination is the one planning which technical or scientific member of the consortium will be writing the scientific articles, and the communication leading partner will be mobilizing small teams within the consortium.
The first thing to remember is to check the Grant Agreement and be sure how many scientific publications you promised to deliver by the end of your project. In some cases, it is not specified that the publications must be published, but submitted publications, which can be an important factor when the final project review comes.
In Coordination and Support Action (CSA) projects, you might want to have about 3-5 scientific publications, which differs from Research and Innovation Action (RIA) and Innovation Action (IA) projects, with about 8-14.
The next step in planning is organizing a team, checking which organization is interested in this activity, and exploring their capacities. One way to define the main topics for the publications is to look at your Work Packages (excluding the horizontal ones like project coordination and communication and dissemination) and the deliverables; most of these results could be the basis for a scientific publication.
Regarding the “usual suspects”, Academia partners are keener on writing scientific publications, but other types of organizations in the consortium should be consulted. Once you have consulted and collected feedback from interested partners, establishing a writing team is the next step. Defining the partners' capacities is also part of the process, for example, if one partner will oversee producing targeted content. Another task could be defining who will be in charge of the general structuring, writing, and framing of the introduction, conclusion and discussions. Project partners can be part of the data collection process, gathering literature review, secondary data review and take part in interviews.
Ideally, the communication and dissemination leader should organize brainstorming sessions. An in-person project meetings are the best options for this step. Afterwards, sharing the brainstorming results with the consortium should follow.
After establishing the writing team and assigning responsibilities, there should be quarterly updates to the whole consortium. The partner leading communication should share a timeline with the consortium, and responsible partners should give updates on the development of the publication.
Keep in mind that all scientific publications that undergo peer-review and receive funding from Horizon Europe must be made available in open access format. This means that the publications must be freely available on the internet immediately upon publication, without any restrictions on usage, by depositing them in a public repository. It is of utmost importance to note that adequate intellectual property rights (IPR) must be retained in order to comply with these open-access requirements. Non-compliance will not be tolerated.
