Communication tools and experiences

This was originally a Horizon 2020 project COOP+ deliverable on WP3 (Dissemination). The original project plan in that project included many individual experiments on creating new ways for environmental RIs to communicate and disseminate in and outside of Europe. For the final deliverable, we decided to include further information gathering also from the whole ENVRI community on different tools and methods, and to create a virtual "handbook" for use of these methods.

This is a living document, and should not be considered to be "finished" - indeed many parts of the document are technology dependent, and use cases are perhaps not covering all aspects of these potential challenges. This is the reason we decided to include this in the ENVRI Wiki, so that contributors have a possibility to include their commentaries and edits.

Dec. 2018

Ari Asmi and Päivi Haapanala, University of Helsinki

About

The overarching goal of COOP+ project is to strengthen the links and coordination of the marine science, Arctic research and biodiversity related Research Infrastructures (RI) that are part of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) with international counterparts. The project aims to leverage international scientific cooperation and data exchange not only within EU countries but also with non-EU countries. One part of the project was to create a dissemination strategy that positions COOP+ initiative in collaboration with the involved RIs as reference to the main stakeholders at the international level. The strategy included the dissemination of foreground knowledge gained during the project, identifying the specific areas in which the project results can have a genuine influence and the different target groups. Particularly, attention was dedicated to the dissemination of RI products to the potential target groups, mainly policy makers, researchers and academics, SMEs, and citizens in general. These tasks are partly described in COOP+ deliverables D3.1 and D3.2. The dissemination methods used and experiences gained through COOP+ project in addition to several environmental RI’s dissemination experiences are described in more detail in this document.

Note: The official title of this deliverable is “Second version of Dissemination and Exploitation Plan & Dissemination and Exploitation Report”. However, together with the project coordination, this deliverable has been expanded to include wide range of dissemination and communication methods used in the research infrastructures. We believe that in this form is far more useful for the research infrastructure community. We use for this report unofficial title “Community handbook for research infrastructure communications.”

For this deliverable we have interviewed representatives from seven environmental research infrastructures. The contact persons were:

- Magdalena Brus, ICOS ERIC, ENVRI

- Jouni Heiskanen, ICOS ERIC,

- Janne-Markus Rintala, ICOS ERIC

- Mari Keski-Nisula, ICOS ERIC

- Leena Järvi, Univ. Helsinki

- Sara Montinaro, LifeWatch

- Claire Gourcuff, Euro-Argo ERIC

- Bek Christensen, Queensland University of Technology (previously TERN)

- Mark Grant, TERN

- Giulia Saponaro, ACTRIS

- Anders Tjulin, EISCAT

- Andy Sier, eLTER

- Taina Ruuskanen, Univ. Helsinki (Carbon Tree)

- Hannakaisa Lindqvist, FMI

What are target groups of an environmental RI and why it is important to communicate with them? How to ensure that the information to be disseminated and communicated derives from the specific information needs of that target group?

One of the main key points in RI’s communication is to identify its target audiences. The four most potentially important target groups for RI communications are perhaps scientific communities, enterprises, policy makers, and citizens. All of these groups can have sub-groups with their own special needs and requirements. Next it is shortly introduced why and who to communicate with different target groups.

Scientific communities. This target audience includes the research communities, other research infrastructures and infrastructures in the environmental fields. Perhaps the easiest to reach target groups are the research communities in the scientific field of the RI. They share the interest towards the scientific questions and problems to be solved and commonly are already integrated to the RI’s activities. It might be more challenging inform the different research communities outside of the integrated communities. The focus of the communication to research communities is to build and/or maintain and deepen the collaboration, exchange of good practices, sharing information on technical implementation, etc., and information flow, increasing the level of networking as well as providing access to RI’s products and services. One important aspect is also to engage and find synergies with new potential users. Raising the number of data users is often necessary for the RI to prove its role in the eyes of funding agencies.

In order to foster the innovation potential of research infrastructures, fluent discussion between the RI and industry and private companies (Small and Medium Enterprises; SMEs) need to be ensured. Creation of an innovation-friendly atmosphere can boost new novel products and technologies to be invented, and further have an effect on the economy. Thus, dissemination of the RI products and services as well as the potential to use SME products in RI’s activities and build jointly new technologies are one of the key points to engage with private sector. Ri needs to be aware of the challenges and differences in the working ways and time scales of academic and business fields.

Dissemination to decision makers and funders may help to engage with the different authorities in European and global level, and potentially attracts resources to the RI and related projects. The goal of this dissemination is often to raise awareness and understanding of the scientific knowledge and socio-economic benefits that the RI can offer. These dissemination activities will use partly similar efforts as for scientific communities, SMEs and citizens, but have their own specific details and limitations. The used methods and messages differ based on the level of the decision maker: local (town, city), regional (several cities), national, international, or global. A possibly important way to reach global policy makers could be via global organizations such as WMO (World Weather Organization), WFO (World Food Organization) and WTO (World Trade Organization).

Dissemination of RI and its products to citizens in a local and global level is to raise awareness of the RI activities, objectives, and it’s benefits to the civil society and create a positive attitude towards the RI. This dissemination can take place via several routes, the two considered to be the most powerful means are media (news agencies, tv, radio) and online tools and games. Providing educational material for school children has also been found important among RIs.

The method(s) to use for communication depends both on message and the target audience. Even if the message is the same, the most efficient method might be different depending on is it RI’s internal or external communication. Different methods and tools are in general useful for several target groups with their own weightings. Table 1 gives few suggestions on methods how to reach different target audiences.

Table 1. Suggested methods to reach different target audiences.

Method	Scientific	Policy	Citizens	Product users
Website	x	x	x	X
Newsletter	x			X
Flyer	X	x	x	X
emails	x			X
Twitter	X	X	X	X
Conferences	X	X		X
Booths	X	X		X
Events	X	x	X	X
Media		X	X
Courses	X			X
Online tools and games	x		x	x
promotional material	x	x	x	x

In next chapters, we will briefly go through the commonly used dissemination methodologies and their pros and cons. The views are based on experiences gained in the COOP+ project and based on Interviews with RIs’ communication persons.

This "Community handbook for research infrastructure communications" is the first collection of such information in the ENVRI community. It does try to provide ideas and results of COOP+ experiments with these methods, but is not considered to be a fully descriptive analysis of all potential communication and dissemination efforts. However, due to interviews with the ENVRI community (which includes the COOP+ community) communication officers, it can be considered to be the starting point of community knowledge base on the subject.

It is important to note that the published version of this document was a COOP+ project deliverable and just the starting point of a living document. The content can be further distributed and edited after the COOP+ project.