What is dissemination and exploitation?
Every year researchers funded by the European Union produce a substantial number of research results. For these results to benefit society, they must be made available to the relevant people and used to generate further impact.
Dissemination and exploitation are 2 key activities to
- diffuse knowledge
- increase the uptake of research and innovation project results in the EU
- demonstrate the generated impact of the projects funded
Dissemination
The public disclosure of the results not only by scientific publications but via any pertinent medium. Dissemination means making results available to the people that can best make use of them e.g. scientific community, industry, other commercial players, policymakers, and more.
Dissemination helps to explain the wider relevance of science to society, build support for future research and innovation funding, ensure the uptake of results within the scientific community, and open up potential business opportunities for novel products or services.
Exploitation
The use of results in developing, creating and marketing or improving a product or process, or in creating and providing a service in standardisation activities or shaping a policy.
Exploitation can be commercial, societal, political, or aimed at improving public knowledge and action. It also includes recommendations for policy making through feedback to policy project partners or facilitating uptake by others e.g. through making results available under open licences.
Exploitation focuses on the actual use of the results, translating research concepts into concrete solutions that have a positive impact on the public's quality of life.
Focus on project results
The focus of the dissemination and exploitation policy is on the results, i.e. all output generated by the project during its implementation.
These may include know-how, innovative solutions, algorithms, proof of feasibility, new business models, policy recommendations, guidelines, prototypes, demonstrators, databases and datasets, trained researchers, new infrastructures, networks, etc.
The results have the potential to be either commercially exploited, e.g. products or services, or lay the foundation for further research, work for policy making or innovation, e.g. novel knowledge, insights, technologies, methods, data, and more.
Strategy
The European Commission designed and is implementing a dissemination and exploitation strategy to support funding beneficiaries taking their results a step further e.g. market uptake, wider scientific use, advice for policymaking, etc.
The Commission supports this by
- offering free tailor-made dissemination and exploitation support services
- providing the tools aimed at increasing visibility and recognition of successful results
- putting forward a Commission-wide scheme to collect and utilise results relevant to policy making i.e. Feedback to Policy framework
Objectives of the strategy
- guide and train applicants and beneficiaries, by offering dissemination and exploitation capacity building activities
- motivate beneficiaries, with incentives to scale up their results
- support beneficiaries by offering targeted services, including on Intellectual Property Management
- synergise with other EU programmes and initiatives
In line with the new European Research Area, the dissemination and exploitation strategy sets the vision of making Horizon Europe a global reference for transforming research and innovation results into scientific, economic and societal value.
The dissemination and exploitation strategy aims to accompany beneficiaries along their dissemination and exploitation journey support them through an integrated ecosystem of services, and bring them closer to relevant stakeholders.
Further activities are foreseen to meet the aforementioned objectives while delivering on the unique aspects of Horizon Europe, such as the EU Missions, as well as on cross-cutting priorities, like the Widening participation and Spreading excellence.
Legal obligations
Beneficiaries of the EU's research and innovation framework programmes are legally obliged to disseminate and exploit results.
Horizon Europe
Horizon Europe is the successor to Horizon 2020. It runs from 2021 to 2027.
Exploitation and Dissemination remains an obligation under article 39 of the regulation establishing Horizon Europe.
Article 39: Exploitation and dissemination
Horizon 2020
Horizon 2020 was the research and innovation funding programme until 2020.
As stated in the rules for participation and articles 28 and 29 it is an obligation for the beneficiaries to plan and implement the dissemination and exploitation of the project results.
Article 28: exploitation of results / Article 29: dissemination of results
Tailored support
To help you effectively share and utilize your project results in line with the dissemination and exploitation strategy, the European Commission provides two distinct, specialized platforms tailored to the specific nature of your results:
The EU Innovation Platform
The digital entry point and marketplace for go-to-market and commercial results. The platform aims to make Europe’s innovation support landscape more accessible and connected. Use this platform to access dedicated services, events, funding, and soon corporate partnerships and investments.
Examples of support services you can find and apply to via this platform:
Tailored, expert-led, and free-of charge services aimed to support EU-funded projects in their journey from results to impact. This comprehensive suite of services accelerates the dissemination and exploitation of research results, enhancing their uptake in the market.
Intellectual property (IP) service providing free-of-charge support to help European SMEs and beneficiaries of EU-funded research projects manage their IP in the context of transnational business or EU research and innovation programmes.
The Horizon Results Platform (HRP)
The official repository dedicated to your policy-relevant and knowledge-sharing (non-go-to-market) results. Use this platform to inform, support, or improve public policy, governance, or broader societal outcomes.
Data and statistics
An interactive and user-friendly knowledge platform offering data and statistics on research programmes. It can be used to produce statistics and analysis on topics, countries, organisations and sectors, individual projects and beneficiaries.
Online repository of all EU-funded research projects and their results. It provides project factsheets, Horizon 2020 reports and deliverables and highlights results in multilingual articles and thematic publications for specialised audiences.
Recognition
EU offers several awards and prizes to recognise innovative solutions to technological and societal challenges that drive progress across research, industry, and community initiatives.
Documents
An initiative from the European Commission providing a set of services to EU-funded projects, free-of-charge, to help navigate the complexities of dissemination and exploitation.
