All European project proposals - both the new Horizon Europe and Horizon 2020 - include a dedicated project visibility section. Although it is important in project evaluation and final scoring, many research teams lose valuable points because they do not give it enough importance.
I listened to several presentations by experts from the European Commission and compiled a list of the most common mistakes researchers make when filling in project proposals or implementing projects already won.
1 Communication is something you "tick"
After analysing the projects implemented in Horizon 2020, the experts observed that communication and dissemination activities were used as a "garnish" of the projects. In other words, the attitude that drove the so-called D&E activities was to tick a box, through gestures or activities without impact.
2 Communication is confused with dissemination
"Promoting" a research result has two different meanings for a researcher and for the evaluator of a European research project. The research team will consider that they have promoted themselves excellently when a result is presented at a prestigious conference or published in a leading scientific journal. An evaluator, without losing sight of this important aspect, will also look at how the results reach beyond the specialist sphere, to those who can use them or who should know about them: this means the business community if appropriate, and NGOs, and politicians, and public authorities and the general public if it is a significant result. In other words, the promotion plan cannot only include "We will publish the result in an ISI-listed journal", but also actions for other audiences need to be considered. I have written more here about the difference between communication, dissemination and exploitation.
3 Project phases drive communication
Press releases Press conferences are used to convey, dryly, that a phase of a project has begun or ended. I wrote some time ago about reasons why such press releases fail and how they can be improved.
4 Do not start from the needs of the public
European projects are designed to respond to a societal challenge. The whole philosophy of writing and evaluation is based on the idea that they will produce results - products or services - that will somehow improve people's lives.
This is also the philosophy that should guide the thinking behind a communication plan. Project teams, instead of starting from the question "Why should this audience care about my project?" take it for granted that people are interested and deliver information about the project's progress to an audience that they didn't have the patience to engage at first.
5 Communication is not related to other activities
A major mistake in writing a European research project is writing "in bits and pieces". When one has only "bits and pieces" of communication, one will think about how to best promote what others have determined should be done. Most of the time, those activities are not designed with a non-specialist audience in mind. This is how you end up inviting the general press to a scientific conference, which is designed strictly for researchers in the field. So why would they come? When the project team thinks up activities together, some of them can be designed from scratch to appeal to the general public - so that in the end the promotion is also relevant to the general public.
Read also what evaluators will expect for the impact part in the new Horizon Europe: communication vs. dissemination vs. exploitation.
English (UK) 
Română